Time Delay, Externalities and Attitudes Toward Taxation. Public attitudes toward a policy have a significant impact on its effectiveness. The aim of this project is to investigate the determinants of public attitudes for incentive-based institutions, particularly taxes, by highlighting the importance of considering the intertemporal properties of taxation: when costs and benefits of taxation occur at different times. This project is designed to be a controlled study of how and why public attitud ....Time Delay, Externalities and Attitudes Toward Taxation. Public attitudes toward a policy have a significant impact on its effectiveness. The aim of this project is to investigate the determinants of public attitudes for incentive-based institutions, particularly taxes, by highlighting the importance of considering the intertemporal properties of taxation: when costs and benefits of taxation occur at different times. This project is designed to be a controlled study of how and why public attitudes towards taxation are influenced by the temporal structure of the externalities that the taxes are meant to control. The anticipated goal is to inform the design of institutions that the public will accept and, more generally, improve the understanding of intertemporal decision-making in environments with delayed externalities.Read moreRead less
Strategic Behaviour in Games. John von Neumann’s minimax solution (1928) and its generalisation to mixed-strategy Nash (1950) equilibrium are the cornerstones of modern game theory, the mathematical framework for the study of decision making when the actions of different decision makers interact. This project studies human behaviour in situations where decision makers have an incentive to be unpredictable. The proposed research will shed light on the sources of the failure of the theory in the l ....Strategic Behaviour in Games. John von Neumann’s minimax solution (1928) and its generalisation to mixed-strategy Nash (1950) equilibrium are the cornerstones of modern game theory, the mathematical framework for the study of decision making when the actions of different decision makers interact. This project studies human behaviour in situations where decision makers have an incentive to be unpredictable. The proposed research will shed light on the sources of the failure of the theory in the lab, and assesses the practical significance of the statistical tests used to evaluate laboratory data on mixed-strategy play.Read moreRead less
Introspection, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games: Theory and Experiment. Game theory is increasingly being used in the social sciences, but the extreme reliance on perfect decision making and perfect foresight has raised doubts about its empirical relevance. This scepticism is reinforced by laboratory evidence showing behaviour patterns that are systematically biased away from game-theoretic predictions. This project concerns the development and testing of models more descriptive of actual huma ....Introspection, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games: Theory and Experiment. Game theory is increasingly being used in the social sciences, but the extreme reliance on perfect decision making and perfect foresight has raised doubts about its empirical relevance. This scepticism is reinforced by laboratory evidence showing behaviour patterns that are systematically biased away from game-theoretic predictions. This project concerns the development and testing of models more descriptive of actual human behaviour. One aim is to deliver hybrid models able to reproduce interesting patterns of first-period play (introspection), time-series data in repeated games (learning), and systematic departures from static equilibrium. Another aim is to apply a successful hybrid to improve the design of economic and social institutions.Read moreRead less
The rate of time preference in choice experiments: A systematic re-analysis. This project intends to re-analyse data from over 20 years of past research to understand when and why people sometimes make short-sighted choices. Time preference is a core concept in both theoretical and applied economics and a key input in public policy, yet empirical understanding of it is poor. Almost all important decisions of households, businesses and government involve benefits and costs that unfold over time. ....The rate of time preference in choice experiments: A systematic re-analysis. This project intends to re-analyse data from over 20 years of past research to understand when and why people sometimes make short-sighted choices. Time preference is a core concept in both theoretical and applied economics and a key input in public policy, yet empirical understanding of it is poor. Almost all important decisions of households, businesses and government involve benefits and costs that unfold over time. Many economists have used decision-making experiments to study how people value the future and make trade-offs over time, but these have not reached any clear consensus. This project plans to systematically re-analyse primary data using state-of-the-art estimation techniques to generate new estimates of the discount rate for each study. These will then be analysed in a meta-regression analysis to identify the factors that cause discount rates to vary between studies.Read moreRead less
Posted prices, bargaining and auctions: an experimental examination. This project uses economic methods to investigate how trading institutions affect prices and efficiency. It examines markets with directed search: buyers visit sellers based on any information they have. Simultaneous buyer choices and sellers’ capacity constraints lead to “frictions” where not all profitable exchanges occur - more realistic than the usual “frictionless” assumption. The project will vary: whether sellers can pos ....Posted prices, bargaining and auctions: an experimental examination. This project uses economic methods to investigate how trading institutions affect prices and efficiency. It examines markets with directed search: buyers visit sellers based on any information they have. Simultaneous buyer choices and sellers’ capacity constraints lead to “frictions” where not all profitable exchanges occur - more realistic than the usual “frictionless” assumption. The project will vary: whether sellers can post prices in advance; and, whether and how negotiation occurs based on how many buyers (one vs two or more) visit a seller. The project will use results from auction, bargaining, game and search theories, and new analysis, to form predictions, which will be tested using experiments. The results should have implications for labour and competition policies.Read moreRead less
Information Quality in Auctions of Multiple Objects. This project aims at using both theory and laboratory experiments to analyse the formation of prices and the buyers' behaviour at auctions of multiple objects. The study focusses on the comparison of simultaneous auction procedures (in which the objects are sold at once) to sequential auction procedures (in which the objects are sold one after the other) and attention is drawn on the effects of the quality of the buyers' information about the ....Information Quality in Auctions of Multiple Objects. This project aims at using both theory and laboratory experiments to analyse the formation of prices and the buyers' behaviour at auctions of multiple objects. The study focusses on the comparison of simultaneous auction procedures (in which the objects are sold at once) to sequential auction procedures (in which the objects are sold one after the other) and attention is drawn on the effects of the quality of the buyers' information about the assets to be sold on their bidding behaviour and on the seller's revenues. The conduct of laboratory experiments will provide a useful assessment of the theoretical predictions and valuable insights into the effects of buyers' information quality on their bidding behaviour at such markets.Read moreRead less
Using behavioural economic insights to overcome student procrastination. This project aims to study the relations between present-biased time preference, procrastination, and achievement at school, using economic experiments. Investment in human capital generates economic benefits for students, families, employers, and society, but its benefits are realised far into the future. Because of these immediate costs and delayed benefits, behavioural economic theory predicts that students will procrast ....Using behavioural economic insights to overcome student procrastination. This project aims to study the relations between present-biased time preference, procrastination, and achievement at school, using economic experiments. Investment in human capital generates economic benefits for students, families, employers, and society, but its benefits are realised far into the future. Because of these immediate costs and delayed benefits, behavioural economic theory predicts that students will procrastinate. This project will identify the characteristics of students at greatest risk of procrastination, evaluate practical strategies to overcome it, and examine whether it is associated with poorer outcomes. This should help schools and policy makers reduce educational inequalities, and yield long-term benefits over students’ lives.Read moreRead less
The effect of bargaining power on bargaining outcomes: the roles of institutions, earned bargaining position and social norms. Previous research has found that people exploit their bargaining power far less than economic theories predict. This project uses an economics experiment to study several factors affecting how bargaining power is used: restrictions on the bargaining process; whether and how bargaining power is 'earned' and whether equal divisions are plausible.
Are claims of transparency to be believed? This project tests if leaders, when given a choice, actually reveal a preference for transparency (that is to share all relevant information with their followers). This project analyses the circumstances under which leaders choose transparency and how their decisions and their reputations for transparency affect followers' behaviour and overall group cooperation.
The Economics of Envy. Envy is persistent and universal. It may help explain why humans are relatively less hierarchical than other primate species and prone to egalitarianism. Envy may help explain the formation of political and social structures and taxation and redistribution policies. This project will examine how in-group and out-group bias, social/economic mobility, and luck versus ability exacerbate and mitigate social preference and when these factors result in destructive and/or constru ....The Economics of Envy. Envy is persistent and universal. It may help explain why humans are relatively less hierarchical than other primate species and prone to egalitarianism. Envy may help explain the formation of political and social structures and taxation and redistribution policies. This project will examine how in-group and out-group bias, social/economic mobility, and luck versus ability exacerbate and mitigate social preference and when these factors result in destructive and/or constructive envy. This investigation contributes to the understanding of envy and its behavioural manifestations. Understanding the correlates of social preferences and the resulting behaviour is important for developing policy to reduce destructive envy and encourage constructive envy. Read moreRead less