Apprenticeship, Cooperation and Choice

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This award funds several research projects in economic theory. Each project examines a specific question about the implications of self-interested behavior. The first project will help us understand how reciprocal altruism leads to cooperation in communities. The second project focuses on how to best structure apprenticeships and traineeships. The third project examines two different models of how individuals make decisions between choices. Taken as a whole, this research will help us understand how societies build cooperation; how to best train individuals for jobs in fields such as law, medicine, academia, and skilled trades; and will improve foundational models used in macroeconomics, finance, neuroscience, and psychology. The first project focuses on self-interested cooperation and introduces a new class of models of anonymous interaction. The project contributes both to the theory of repeated games and to the design of reputation systems. The project on apprenticeship employs contract theory and optimal control theory to understand key empirical features of apprenticeships as well as the implications of possible government regulations that would reduce apprentices’ hours and increase their pay. The project on choice under uncertainty will apply machine learning methods to experimental data to develop better models of choice under uncertainty. The second part of this final project will develop identification, estimation, and testing results for the drift diffusion model which is used to explain the observed correlation between probability of choice and time to decision.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.