Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Belief Formation and Choice in Games: An Experiment

许多经济分析都基于这样一种观点，即经济主体会对激励做出反应，他们会更加努力地理解自己行为的后果，以便做出正确的决策。这项研究项目将通过实验室实验，在S做出决定之前，在考虑其他人的反应会对自己投入环境研究的努力产生影响的同时，测试是否增加奖励或惩罚的规模(下文中的赌注)。这项研究将回答以下问题：(I)赌注的大小是否会影响人们的选择和信念？(Ii)更高的赌注是否会带来更好的反应？(Iii)信念是否会随着赌注的增加而变得更加准确？以及(Iv)这些影响是否取决于问题的复杂程度？尽管这些问题对经济科学很重要，但经济学家一直无法对它们进行检验，因为赌注、信念和行动之间存在反馈效应-对一个人来说，改变赌注会改变他们的信念和行为，因此无法确定奖励或惩罚的大小如何影响努力。实验室实验允许研究人员绕过这些问题，旨在允许研究人员改变奖励的大小，同时允许人们扮演决策者和观察者的角色。这使得研究人员可以研究人们是如何形成对他人的信念的，同时也可以对赌注的变化做出反应。这项研究的结果将有助于改善决策，特别是在与他人互动时，并在此过程中提高生产率和经济增长。一个面临决策的人会考虑可能的行动方案以及利害关系。此外，如果这样的决定的结果取决于其他人做了什么，决策者可能会花一些时间来了解自己和其他人的行动是如何相互作用的。本研究分析了以下问题：赌注是否会影响选择和信念的形成？更高的赌注是否会导致更高的最佳响应率？随着赌注的增加，信念是否会变得更加准确？这些影响取决于游戏的复杂程度吗？目前的文献没有提供这些问题的答案，本研究旨在填补这一空白。这个项目测试了改变战略环境中的赌注如何影响个人的选择和对其他人可能的战略形成的信念。检验这些假设的一个根本挑战是，激励、信念和行动之间存在交互作用：改变一个受试者的激励不仅会影响特定的个人，还会影响其他将改变其行为的人。该研究项目通过实验设计克服了这一问题，受试者既是参与者，又是观察者。在后一种情况下，他们自己的回报会发生变化，但他们是在一个环境中做出选择的，在这个环境中，其他参与者已经以不同的动机做出了选择。研究设计能够将扩大赌注对选择和信念的影响从均衡中分离出来。此外，这一设计将允许研究人员对跨游戏比较提供新的见解。它还提出了一类新的博弈，跨越了那些需要多步迭代删除受控策略的博弈，以及那些没有纯策略均衡的博弈。这类博弈在它们与k级和随机效用模型的联系方面具有各种理想的性质。这项研究的结果将有助于改进决策，特别是在与其他人互动并在此过程中提高生产率和经济增长的过程中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Much of economic analysis is based on the idea that economic agents respond to incentives and that they will increase their effort to understand the consequences of their actions in order to make the right decisions. This research project will use laboratory experiments to test whether increasing the size of reward or punishment (stakes henceforth) while considering how others will react affect the effort one puts into studying the environment before s/he makes the decision. The research will answer the following questions: (i) does the size of stakes affect people’s choices and beliefs? (ii) does higher stakes lead to better responses? (iii) do beliefs become more accurate as stakes increase?, and (iv) do these effects depend on how complex the problem is? In spite of the importance of these questions to economic science, economists have not been able to test them because there is a feedback effect among stakes, beliefs, and actions---changing stakes for one person will change their beliefs and actions, accordingly, thus making it impossible to determine how the size of reward or punishment affects effort. The laboratory experiments, which allows the researcher to get around these problems, are designed to allow the researcher to change the size of the reward while allowing people to play the role of decision maker as well as observers. This allows the researcher to study how people form beliefs about others as well as react to changes in stakes at the same time. The results of this research will help improve decision making, especially when interacting with other people, and in the process, increase productivity and economic growth. An individual facing a decision takes into account possible courses of action as well as what is at stake. In addition, if the outcome of such a decision depends on what others do, a decision maker may spend some time to understand how her own action and those of others interact. This research analyzes the following questions: Do stakes affect choices and belief formation? Do higher stakes lead to higher best-response rates? Do beliefs become more accurate as stakes increase? Do these effects depend on how complex the game is? Current literature does not provide answers to these questions and this research aims to fill this gap. This project test how changing the stakes in a strategic environment affect both the choices of the individual and the beliefs formed on others’ likely strategy. A fundamental challenge of testing these hypotheses is that there exists interaction effects among incentives, beliefs, and actions: changing the incentives of one subject will not only affect that particular individual but also on others who will change their behavior. The research project overcomes this issue through an experimental design where subjects act as both players and observers. In the latter, their own payoff changes but they make choices in an environment where choices have already been made by other actors with different incentives. The research design is able to isolate the effect of scaling up the stakes on choices and beliefs from equilibrium. Furthermore, the design will allow the researchers to provide new insights on cross-game comparisons. It also presents a new class of games spanning those requiring multiple steps of iterative deletion of dominated strategies to those without pure-strategy equilibria. This class of games has various desirable properties in terms of their connection to level-k and random utility models. The results of this research will help improve decision making, especially when interacting with other people and in the process increase productivity and economic growth.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.