The paper analyzes the infinite-horizon alternating-offers bargaining game between agents with inequity-averse preferences. Without prior investments,nthe model predicts a shift of the outcome towards equal division. Asymmetricninvestments affect the ex-post bargaining outcome, giving an advantage to the party that contributed more. Under suitable circumstances, this effectnmay significantly mitigate the hold-up problem. In fact, in a symmetric setup, if production is sufficiently profitable, and parties are sufficiently patient, then the first-best investment levels can be approximated without a con
The goal of this paper is to assess, for the first time, the empirical impact of "Keynes’ beauty contest", or "higher order beliefs", on asset price volatility. The paper shows that heterogeneous expectations induce higher order beliefs and that heterogeneous expectation asset pricing models theoretically generate more volatility than rational expectation models. The paper also explains how, with some assumptions on the distribution of public and private information, a model with higher order beliefs can be empirically estimated. The model is then applied to annual data of the American stock market. The results show that a model with higher order beliefs generates a level of volatility in line with the price volatility observed on the market.
There are at least two reasons why multiple prizes can be optimal in symmetric imperfectly discriminating contests. First, the introduction of multiple prizes reduces the standard deviation of contestants' effort in asymmetric equilibria, when the majority of contestants actively participate in competition. Second, the introduction of multiple prizes may increase the aggregate (average) effort contributed in the contest. When more of a total prize fund is shifted away from the first prize, on the one hand, the active contestants obtain an incentive to reduce their individual effort, but, on the other hand, the number of active contestants may increase. Therefore, the aggregate (average) effort may increase when the number of active contestants in equilibrium increases.
The present paper shows that a sufficient condition for the existence of a stable solution to an autoregressive neural network model is the continuity and boundedness of the activation function of the hidden units in the multi layer perceptron (MLP). In addition, uniqueness of a stable solution is ensured by global lipschitzness and some conditions on the parameters of the system. In this case, the stable value is globally stable and convergence of the learning process occurs at exponential rate.
A natural conjecture is that speculative trade disappears when individual beliefs become correct through learning. Sandroni in [22] gives a counterexample in an economy with sunspots. We generalizenSandroni's result by showing that the conjecture holds for economies with complete markets only. We consider a standard finite-horizon General Equilibrium model with complete markets, where uncertaintynis represented by fluctuations in individual endowments. Individual beliefs are formed through arbitrary learning processes, and become eventually correct. We show that along every path of events, equilibrium prices of traded assets converge to rational expectations for the sup-norm. We also give a set of sufficient conditions on beliefs andnaggregate endowment leading to market crashes, as in Sandroni [22].nWe show that such situations are generically continuous perturbations of rational expectations behaviors when beliefs satisfy a requirementnintroduced here.
This paper investigates simultaneous learning about both nature and others' actions in repeated games, and identifies a set of sufficient conditions assuring that equilibrium actions converge to a Nash equilibrium.nPlayers have each an utility function over infinite histories continuous for the product topology. Nature' drawing after any history can depend on any past actions, or can be independent of them.nProvided that 1) every player maximizes her expected payoff against her own beliefs, 2) every player updates her beliefs in a Bayesian manner, 3) prior beliefs about both nature and other players' strategies have a grain of truth, and 4) beliefs about nature are independent of actions chosen during the game, we show that after some finite time the equilibrium outcome of the above game is arbitrarily close to a Nash equilibrium.nThose assumptions are shown to be tight.
"Women earn less than men but are not less satisfied with life. This paper argues that norms on the appropriate pay for women compared to men explain thesenfindings. We take citizens’ approval of an equal rights amendment to the Swissnconstitution as a proxy for the norm that “women and men shall have the right to equal pay for work of equal value”. We find that the gender wage gap narrows by onenfifth due to an increase by one standard deviation in the approval. Rejecting annexplanation in terms of discrimination, we find that employed women are less (notnmore) satisfied with life in liberal communities where the gender wage gap is smaller."
We show experimentally that a principal's distrust in the voluntary performance of an agent has a negative impact on the agent's motivation to perform well. Before the agent chooses his performance, the principal in our experiment decides whether he wants to restrict the agents' choice set by implementing a minimum performance level for the agent. Since both parties have conflicting interests, restriction is optimal for the principal whenever the latter expects the agent to behave opportunistically. We find that most principals in our experiment do not restrict the agent's choice set but trust that the agent will perform well voluntarily. Principals who trust induce, on average, a higher performance and hence earn higher payoffs than principals who control. The reason is that most agents lower their performance as a response to the signal of distrust created by the principal's decision to limit their choice set. Our results shed new light on dysfunctional effects of explicit incentives as well as the puzzling incompleteness of many economic contracts.
Distortions in memory impose important bounds on rationality but have been largely disregarded in economics. While it is possible to learn, it is more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to unlearn. This retention effect lowers individual utility directly or via reduced productivity, andnadds costs to principal-agent relationships. The imprinting effect states that the more one tries to forget a piece of information the more vivid it stays in memory, leading to a paradoxical outcome. The effects are based on, and are supported by, psychological experiments, and it is shown that they are relevant in many economic situations and beyond.
This paper reports on a two-task principal-agent experiment in which only one task is contractible. The principal can either offer a piece-rate contract or a (voluntary) bonus to the agent. Bonus contracts strongly outperform piece rate contracts. Many principals reward high efforts on both tasks with substantial bonuses. Agents anticipate this and provide high efforts on both tasks. In contrast, almost all agents with a piece rate contract focus on the first task and disregard the second.nPrincipals understand this and predominantly offer bonus contracts. This behavior contradicts the self-interest theory but is consistent with theories of fairness.
