Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Two Experiments on the Behavioral Equivalence of Dirty Faces Games

经济学博士论文研究：脏脸游戏行为等价性的两个实验

• 批准号: 2243268
• 负责人: Thomas Palfrey
• 金额: $ 2.36万
• 依托单位: California Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-02-01 至 2025-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2243268&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Two

One of the main goals of behavioral economics is to better understand the implications of human cognitive limitations on behavior in strategic settings related to economic, social, and political competition. This branch of behavioral economics, behavioral game theory, focuses on how people form expectations in strategic environments about the anticipated behavior of other individuals. This project will experimentally investigate the “dirty faces game”, a workhorse example of a strategic environment where individuals can observe some actions by other players in the game that enable them to make inferences leading to more informed decisions. This is a simple but illustrative game that models situations where people update their beliefs and make decisions based on others’ past behavior, such as choosing a restaurant or purchasing a new product by reading reviews by other people. Classical theory about behavior in games, based on assumptions of perfect rationality, makes behaviorally implausible predictions in this game. Relaxing the assumption of perfect rationality leads to drastically different predictions about behavior in the dirty faces game, which makes it an ideal test bed for a new “dynamic cognitive hierarchy theory” (DCH) that predicts that, in dirty faces games, players will generally behave differently under two different conventional experimental protocols (direct response vs. strategy method), while the standard theory does not predict any behavioral difference. This project designs two experiments to detect the behavioral differences predicted by DCH in these games. A long-run goal of this project is not only to test the theory, but also to provide insights to policy designs that take account of cognitive limitations. Armed with improved theoretical models, policy makers can design more cognitively robust auctions, tax schemes, regulations, and other mechanisms to improve economic performance. The dirty faces game is a strategic environment where each individual within a group of individuals has either a dirty or a clean face and can see all other players’ faces but not their own faces. Over a sequence of decision periods, each individual can take an action that provides some information about the faces they see, and the ultimate goal of each individual is to learn their own face type from observing the others’ actions. At the beginning of the game, an honest announcement is made by an observer about whether or not there is at least one dirty face. From the standard game-theoretic perspective, players will eventually learn whether their face is dirty or clean. Moreover, the extensive and strategic form representations of this game are strategically equivalent and make the same classical predictions. However, from the psychological perspective, the mental processes are completely different---in the strategic form representation, players make inferences based on hypothetical events while in the extensive form representation, players can make statistical inferences based on observed behavior. In a two-person dirty faces game, equilibrium theory predicts players will know their face type within two periods---regardless of the payoffs and the representations (extensive form vs. strategic form). Specifically, DCH predicts both the payoff structure and game-form representation will jointly affect behavior: (1) players will behave closer to the equilibrium in the extensive form representation if they are sufficiently impatient and payoffs are sufficiently low; and (2) the representation effect exists depends on the number of decision periods (horizon). Experiment 1 uses a 2x2 design where the representations (extensive vs. strategic form) and the payoffs (high vs. low) are systematically varied. Experiment 2 manipulates the horizon of the game. DCH predicts when the horizon of the game is shorter, the representation effect detected in Experiment 1 will vanish.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

行为经济学的主要目标之一是更好地理解与经济，社会和政治竞争有关的战略环境中人类认知局限性对行为的含义。行为经济学，行为游戏理论的这个分支集中在人们如何在战略环境中对其他人的预期行为形成期望。该项目将实验研究“肮脏的面孔游戏”，这是一个策略环境的主力示例，其中个人可以观察游戏中其他玩家的某些行动，从而使他们能够推断出更明智的决定。这是一个简单但说明性的游戏，它可以建模人们更新信念并根据他人过去的行为做出决定，例如选择餐厅或通过阅读其他人的评论来购买新产品。基于完美理性的假设，关于游戏行为的经典理论使该游戏在行为上令人难以置信的预测。放松完美理性的假设会导致对肮脏面孔游戏中行为的预测截然不同，这使其成为新的“动态认知层次结构理论”（DCH）的理想测试床（DCH），该床预测，在肮脏的面对游戏中，玩家通常会在两种不同的常规实验方面表现出色（直接响应vangient vs.策略方法），同时预测任何标准的行为方案。该项目设计了两个实验，以检测这些游戏中DCH预测的行为差异。该项目的长期目标不仅是测试理论，而且还为考虑认知局限性的政策设计提供见解。通过改进的理论模型，政策制定者可以设计更具认知性的稳健拍卖，税收方案，法规和其他机制，以改善经济绩效。肮脏的面孔游戏是一个战略环境，一组个人中的每个人都有肮脏的面孔或干净的脸，可以看到所有其他玩家的脸，而不是自己的脸。在一系列决策期内，每个人都可以采取一项动作，以提供有关他们所看到的面孔的一些信息，每个人的最终目标是从观察他人的行为中学习自己的面部类型。在游戏开始时，观察家就至少有一张肮脏的面孔发表了诚实的公告。从标准的游戏理论角度来看，玩家最终将了解自己的脸是肮脏还是干净。此外，该游戏的广泛和战略形式在战略上是等效的，并做出相同的经典预测。但是，从心理学的角度来看，心理过程在战略形式表示中完全不同 - - - 玩家根据假设事件进行推断，而在广泛的形式表示中，玩家可以根据观察到的行为进行统计推断。在一个两人的肮脏面孔游戏中，平等理论预测玩家将在两个时期内知道自己的面部类型 - 无论收益和表示形式如何（广泛的形式与战略形式）。具体而言，DCH预测收益结构和游戏形式表示形式将共同影响行为：（1）如果玩家足够不耐烦，并且回报足够低，则玩家的行为将更接近同等的形式表示； （2）存在表示效应取决于决策期（地平线）的数量。实验1使用2x2设计，其中表示形式（广泛与战略形式）和收益（高与低）是系统的变化。实验2操纵游戏的视野。 DCH预测游戏的视野何时较短，实验1中检测到的表示效果将消失。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来评估，被认为是珍贵的支持。