Pub Date : 2025-07-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.008
Shimon Kogan , Florian H. Schneider , Roberto A. Weber
Beliefs about collective outcomes play an important role in many contexts. We study biases in the formation of such beliefs. Specifically, we investigate whether self-serving biases in information processing—documented for beliefs about individual outcomes—affect beliefs about collective outcomes. In a first study, we find that people indeed exhibit self-serving biases for collective outcomes, and that such biases are similar to biases for individual outcomes. We also observe that the presence of a market institution for aggregating private information produces, if anything, slightly greater collective self-delusion. In a second study, we investigate the mechanisms driving collective self-delusion and find that anticipatory utility plays a large role, rather than ego-utility considerations.
{"title":"Self-serving biases in beliefs about collective outcomes","authors":"Shimon Kogan , Florian H. Schneider , Roberto A. Weber","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Beliefs about collective outcomes play an important role in many contexts. We study biases in the formation of such beliefs. Specifically, we investigate whether self-serving biases in information processing—documented for beliefs about individual outcomes—affect beliefs about collective outcomes. In a first study, we find that people indeed exhibit self-serving biases for collective outcomes, and that such biases are similar to biases for individual outcomes. We also observe that the presence of a market institution for aggregating private information produces, if anything, slightly greater collective self-delusion. In a second study, we investigate the mechanisms driving collective self-delusion and find that anticipatory utility plays a large role, rather than ego-utility considerations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 315-344"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144686405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-07-02DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.007
Daiki Kishishita , Susumu Sato
Watchdog journalism, the idea that independent media outlets monitor people in power, can be undermined when the people in power serve as news sources on which the media rely. By developing a model of media competition with a strategic news source, we show that the presence of a news source creates pro-source biases; the coexistence of neutral watchdogs and biased yes men arises as an outcome of mixed strategy equilibrium. This bias can make the presence of a news source harmful to consumers.
{"title":"Watchdog versus yes man: News source and media competition","authors":"Daiki Kishishita , Susumu Sato","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Watchdog journalism, the idea that independent media outlets monitor people in power, can be undermined when the people in power serve as news sources on which the media rely. By developing a model of media competition with a strategic news source, we show that the presence of a news source creates pro-source biases; the coexistence of neutral watchdogs and biased yes men arises as an outcome of mixed strategy equilibrium. This bias can make the presence of a news source harmful to consumers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 233-253"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144556831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-19DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.005
Jan Heufer , Jason Shachat , Yan Xu
We propose an instrument to measure individuals' social preferences regarding equity and efficiency behind a veil of ignorance while controlling for idiosyncratic risk preferences. We construct a battery of portfolio and wealth distribution choice problems sharing a common budget set. A given bundle induces the same distribution over an individual's wealth in both problems. The portfolio choice solely reflects an individual's risk attitude, providing a benchmark to evaluate whether their wealth distribution choice exhibits equity or efficiency preferring tastes. Our experiments show clusters of social preference types, which are unexpectedly independent of risk preferences.
{"title":"Measuring tastes for equity and aggregate wealth behind the veil of ignorance","authors":"Jan Heufer , Jason Shachat , Yan Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose an instrument to measure individuals' social preferences regarding equity and efficiency behind a veil of ignorance while controlling for idiosyncratic risk preferences. We construct a battery of portfolio and wealth distribution choice problems sharing a common budget set. A given bundle induces the same distribution over an individual's wealth in both problems. The portfolio choice solely reflects an individual's risk attitude, providing a benchmark to evaluate whether their wealth distribution choice exhibits equity or efficiency preferring tastes. Our experiments show clusters of social preference types, which are unexpectedly independent of risk preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 209-232"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144471816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-19DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.006
Yifan Xiong , Guopeng Li , Youze Lang
This paper investigates how a monopolist strategically acquires information from networked consumers with correlated preferences using discriminatory or uniform pricing schemes. Under uniform pricing, the optimal information acquisition problem can be efficiently solved in polynomial time by iteratively selecting consumers with the highest Katz-Bonacich centrality. By contrast, under discriminatory pricing, the problem is generally NP-hard. However, in typical networks, such as complete bipartite, core-periphery, and nested-split networks, the optimal targeted group can be characterized in a straightforward manner: the monopolist simply prioritizes consumers with higher degrees. A comparative analysis shows that the size of the optimal targeted group decreases with information cost but follows an inverted U-shape with respect to preference correlation. Allowing the monopolist to acquire information always reduces welfare under discriminatory pricing, whereas under uniform pricing, the impact is not necessarily negative.
{"title":"Pricing and information acquisition in networks","authors":"Yifan Xiong , Guopeng Li , Youze Lang","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates how a monopolist strategically acquires information from networked consumers with correlated preferences using discriminatory or uniform pricing schemes. Under uniform pricing, the optimal information acquisition problem can be efficiently solved in polynomial time by iteratively selecting consumers with the highest Katz-Bonacich centrality. By contrast, under discriminatory pricing, the problem is generally NP-hard. However, in typical networks, such as complete bipartite, core-periphery, and nested-split networks, the optimal targeted group can be characterized in a straightforward manner: the monopolist simply prioritizes consumers with higher degrees. A comparative analysis shows that the size of the optimal targeted group decreases with information cost but follows an inverted U-shape with respect to preference correlation. Allowing the monopolist to acquire information always reduces welfare under discriminatory pricing, whereas under uniform pricing, the impact is not necessarily negative.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 179-208"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144471815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-18DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.004
Kriti Manocha , Bertan Turhan
This paper studies a multi-period college admissions problem where schools' choice rules incorporate affirmative action constraints. Students have the option to either finalize their assignments at the end of each period or participate in subsequent periods with the possibility of updating their rank-ordered lists (ROLs). We show that a gradual matching mechanism makes active students weakly better off (i.e. satisfies monotonicity) if and only if their ROL update rule meets a mild regularity condition. We introduce the notion of gradual stability adapted for multi-period matching mechanisms that account for affirmative action constraints. Furthermore, we show that the gradual stability of a gradual matching mechanism is equivalent to monotonicity in conjunction with the stability of the stage mechanism. Finally, we use our results to analyze the multi-stage mechanism currently used for engineering college admissions in India.
{"title":"Gradual matching with affirmative action","authors":"Kriti Manocha , Bertan Turhan","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies a multi-period college admissions problem where schools' choice rules incorporate affirmative action constraints. Students have the option to either finalize their assignments at the end of each period or participate in subsequent periods with the possibility of updating their rank-ordered lists (ROLs). We show that a gradual matching mechanism makes active students weakly better off (i.e. satisfies monotonicity) if and only if their ROL update rule meets a mild regularity condition. We introduce the notion of gradual stability adapted for multi-period matching mechanisms that account for affirmative action constraints. Furthermore, we show that the gradual stability of a gradual matching mechanism is equivalent to monotonicity in conjunction with the stability of the stage mechanism. Finally, we use our results to analyze the multi-stage mechanism currently used for engineering college admissions in India.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 164-178"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144338899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-11DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.012
Sabine Fischer , Kerstin Grosch
This study examines the effect of agents' overconfident expectations in their production on their contract breach. Drawing on a reference-dependent framework, we theoretically deduce propositions for compliance to agreements where an agent exhibits overconfidence and loss aversion. We further conduct a lab experiment with a multiple-stage design and find that overconfident agents are more likely to breach the contract than non-overconfident agents. Moreover, overconfident agents breach more often and to a greater extent with increasing loss aversion. We also test the impact of a non-deterministic environment (“shock condition”) where payoff misestimation can be masked compared to a deterministic environment (“no-shock condition”). Agents breach more often in the shock condition, but breach extent remains unaffected. Results are mostly in line with the theoretical framework. In a treatment, we manipulate agents' overconfidence exogenously and use it as an instrument to establish causality.
{"title":"Contract breach with overconfident expectations: Experimental evidence on reference-dependent preferences","authors":"Sabine Fischer , Kerstin Grosch","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the effect of agents' overconfident expectations in their production on their contract breach. Drawing on a reference-dependent framework, we theoretically deduce propositions for compliance to agreements where an agent exhibits overconfidence and loss aversion. We further conduct a lab experiment with a multiple-stage design and find that overconfident agents are more likely to breach the contract than non-overconfident agents. Moreover, overconfident agents breach more often and to a greater extent with increasing loss aversion. We also test the impact of a non-deterministic environment (“shock condition”) where payoff misestimation can be masked compared to a deterministic environment (“no-shock condition”). Agents breach more often in the shock condition, but breach extent remains unaffected. Results are mostly in line with the theoretical framework. In a treatment, we manipulate agents' overconfidence exogenously and use it as an instrument to establish causality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 145-163"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144271798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-11DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.002
Shota Ichihashi , Alex Smolin
A monopoly seller is privately and imperfectly informed about the buyer's value of the product. A designer can provide the seller with additional information, which the seller uses to price discriminate the buyer. We demonstrate the difficulty of screening the seller's information: When the buyer's value is binary, no combination of buyer surplus and seller profit can be implemented other than those achieved by providing the same information to all seller types. We use the result to characterize the set of implementable welfare outcomes and demonstrate the trade-off between buyer surplus and efficiency.
{"title":"Data provision to an informed seller","authors":"Shota Ichihashi , Alex Smolin","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A monopoly seller is privately and imperfectly informed about the buyer's value of the product. A designer can provide the seller with additional information, which the seller uses to price discriminate the buyer. We demonstrate the difficulty of screening the seller's information: When the buyer's value is binary, no combination of buyer surplus and seller profit can be implemented other than those achieved by providing the same information to all seller types. We use the result to characterize the set of implementable welfare outcomes and demonstrate the trade-off between buyer surplus and efficiency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 131-144"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144263720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.001
Shuhei Morimoto
We study a class of matching problems in which monetary transfers are possible. In this paper, we establish a close connection between the core and the existence of desirable rules that satisfy strategy-proofness or one-sided strategy-proofness. In our main result, we show that the optimal core is a unified lower bound of welfare for the existence of rules that satisfy strategy-proofness (or one-sided strategy-proofness), efficiency, individual rationality, and no subsidy. Applying this result, we also obtain impossibility and characterization results in our environment.
{"title":"Strategy-proofness, efficiency, and the core in matching problems with transfers","authors":"Shuhei Morimoto","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.06.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study a class of matching problems in which monetary transfers are possible. In this paper, we establish a close connection between the core and the existence of desirable rules that satisfy strategy-proofness or one-sided strategy-proofness. In our main result, we show that the optimal core is a unified lower bound of welfare for the existence of rules that satisfy strategy-proofness (or one-sided strategy-proofness), efficiency, individual rationality, and no subsidy. Applying this result, we also obtain impossibility and characterization results in our environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 30-41"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144241155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.011
Arianna Degan , Yushen Li , Huan Xie
We conduct an experiment on a two-player infinitely repeated favor exchange game. In the stage game, each player decides whether to provide a favor to the other player. A favor generates a fixed benefit for the recipient and a cost for the provider, which can be either low or high. We study the situation where this cost is private information and it is efficient to provide a favor only when the cost is low. We address two general questions: 1) To what extent do subjects exchange favors in ways that are payoff enhancing, given that private information hinders exchanging favors efficiently? 2) Which strategies do subjects choose and what are the driving forces behind their choices? We focus on Stationary Strongly Symmetric (SSS) strategies, where players play the same strategy after any history, and Equality Matching (EM) strategies, where subjects keep track of the net tallies of favors. We find that overall subjects exchange favors to a relatively large extent and achieve an average payoff-efficiency index exceeding 60%. Although simple strategies, as SSS, are played with the highest frequency, more complex strategies, as EM, explain an important proportion of the data. Subjects' behavior is not always consistent with incentive compatibility or driven by the attainment of higher ex-ante payoffs. The results also suggest that rewarding subjects for trusting and reciprocating might be more acceptable than requiring them to take very costly actions on the equilibrium path, even when it is overall payoff enhancing.
{"title":"Favor exchange with private costs: An experiment","authors":"Arianna Degan , Yushen Li , Huan Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We conduct an experiment on a two-player infinitely repeated favor exchange game. In the stage game, each player decides whether to provide a favor to the other player. A favor generates a fixed benefit for the recipient and a cost for the provider, which can be either low or high. We study the situation where this cost is private information and it is efficient to provide a favor only when the cost is low. We address two general questions: 1) To what extent do subjects exchange favors in ways that are payoff enhancing, given that private information hinders exchanging favors efficiently? 2) Which strategies do subjects choose and what are the driving forces behind their choices? We focus on Stationary Strongly Symmetric (SSS) strategies, where players play the same strategy after any history, and Equality Matching (EM) strategies, where subjects keep track of the net tallies of favors. We find that overall subjects exchange favors to a relatively large extent and achieve an average payoff-efficiency index exceeding 60%. Although simple strategies, as SSS, are played with the highest frequency, more complex strategies, as EM, explain an important proportion of the data. Subjects' behavior is not always consistent with incentive compatibility or driven by the attainment of higher ex-ante payoffs. The results also suggest that rewarding subjects for trusting and reciprocating might be more acceptable than requiring them to take very costly actions on the equilibrium path, even when it is overall payoff enhancing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 94-112"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144263718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-06-06DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.010
Simon Loertscher , Ellen V. Muir
The ability of larger markets to mitigate the incentive problem created by private information has been the focus of a sizable economics literature. In contrast, the fact that thicker markets also reduce the double coincidence of wants problem has received little attention. Modeling thin markets as bilateral trade involving independent private values and thick markets as Walrasian markets with a continuum of traders, we analyze and quantify the matching benefits of market thickness. These benefits increase with the nicheness of a product, which we measure as the mass of values and costs outside an interval of overlapping support where there are positive gains from trade. For sufficient nicheness, profit-maximizing intermediaries operating thick markets outperform ex post efficient bilateral trade. However, with bilateral trade as an outside option, traders of niche products are most vulnerable to intermediaries' market power. Extensions consider fixed costs of operating thick markets and finitely thick markets.
{"title":"The matching benefits of market thickness","authors":"Simon Loertscher , Ellen V. Muir","doi":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geb.2025.05.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The ability of larger markets to mitigate the incentive problem created by private information has been the focus of a sizable economics literature. In contrast, the fact that thicker markets also reduce the double coincidence of wants problem has received little attention. Modeling thin markets as bilateral trade involving independent private values and thick markets as Walrasian markets with a continuum of traders, we analyze and quantify the <em>matching benefits</em> of market thickness. These benefits increase with the <em>nicheness</em> of a product, which we measure as the mass of values and costs outside an interval of overlapping support where there are positive gains from trade. For sufficient nicheness, profit-maximizing intermediaries operating thick markets outperform ex post efficient bilateral trade. However, with bilateral trade as an outside option, traders of niche products are most vulnerable to intermediaries' market power. Extensions consider fixed costs of operating thick markets and finitely thick markets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48291,"journal":{"name":"Games and Economic Behavior","volume":"153 ","pages":"Pages 42-66"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144254383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号