Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Regret in Games: When It Is Not (Only) Your Fault

经济学博士论文研究：游戏中的遗憾：当它不是（唯一）你的错时

• 批准号: 2146695
• 负责人: Guillaume Frechette
• 金额: $ 1.45万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-04-01 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2146695&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Regret

This project lies at the interface of economics and psychology. It will examine how feelings of regret and blame shape human behavior in situations where people interact strategically so that each person’s welfare also depends on the actions of others. It poses that people regret their actions when they feel responsible for a bad outcome. On the other hand, they blame other people when they believe them to be responsible for the bad outcome. This project will examine how this tension between regret and blame affects behavior and economic outcomes. The project will (i) emphasize the importance of accounting for emotions in economic models, (ii) enhance our understanding of environments where reduced cooperation and inefficient outcomes may arise due to division of responsibility, and (iii) produce a previously nonexistent type of data that other researchers in economics and psychology can use.This proposed work will examine regret in games. It will propose a theory where strategically-interacting agents make choices taking into account both material payoffs and the regret that their choices may generate. This theory accounts for how the magnitude of a player’s (anticipated) regret (for her action in a game and her resulting payoff) is affected by the division of responsibility between the players for the outcome of the game. This is the first work to consider a strategic form of regret, since earlier works have analyzed regret as if in a single-agent context with the opponents’ actions treated as the state of the world. The intuition is as follows. In a decision-theoretic context an outcome is exclusively a result of the decision-maker’s (DM) choice and ”luck” (the at first unknown state of the world). Feelings of regret can naturally arise given the power the DM has over the outcome. On the other hand, the outcome of a game is the result of the strategic interaction of multiple agents. Thus, it is postulated that a player may not (expect to) experience feelings of regret to the same degree, as she may feel less responsible for the combined result of all the players’ actions. Specifically, it is posed that a player’s regret tends to arise when her chosen action is proven sub-optimal after the other players’ actions are revealed. However, her regret is mitigated if it is also revealed that the other players could have chosen differently (making everyone better off), as part of the blame is attributed to them. The project will examine both theoretically and experimentally how such regret and blame considerations affect economic outcomes and whether accounting for these consideration leads to theoretical predictions closer to experimental findings. The project will have three main benefits. First, it will contribute to our understanding of the circumstances under which attribution of responsibility and blame can affect outcomes of strategic interactions. It will also help us understand whether this effect will be welfare enhancing or damaging, and gauge the magnitude of the effect. Second, it will inform theoretical work by emphasizing the gains from modifications to models of choice when those are applied in games. Last, it will produce experimental data on regret and blame in games that other researchers can use.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.

该项目在于经济学和心理学的界面。它将研究遗憾和模糊的感觉如何在人们战略性地互动的情况下塑造人类的行为，以便每个人的福利也取决于他人的行为。人们认为，当人们对不良结果负责时，他们后悔自己的行为。另一方面，当他们认为他们对不良结果负责时，他们模糊了其他人。该项目将研究遗憾与模糊之间的这种张力如何影响行为和经济成果。该项目将（i）强调在经济模型中考虑情绪的重要性，（ii）增强我们对由于责任分裂而产生的合作和效率低下的环境的理解，并且（iii）生成了以前不存在经济学和心理学研究人员可以使用其他研究人员的数据。这项拟议的工作将检查游戏中的遗憾。在策略上相互交互的代理人考虑了物质收益以及他们选择可能产生的遗憾。该理论解释了玩家（预期）遗憾（因为她在游戏中的行动和由此产生的回报）如何受到玩家之间的责任分裂的影响。这是考虑一种战略形式的遗憾形式的第一项工作，因为早期的作品已经分析了遗憾，就好像在单人的背景下，选项的行动被视为世界状况。直觉如下。在决策理论的背景下，结果仅是决策者（DM）选择和“运气”（首先是世界上未知状态）的结果。鉴于DM对结果的力量，遗憾的感觉自然会产生。另一方面，游戏的结果是多个代理商战略互动的结果。据说，玩家可能不会（期望）在同一程度上感到遗憾的感觉，因为她可能对所有球员的行动的综合结果造成了不太责任。具体而言，可以将玩家的遗憾倾向于在揭示其他玩家的动作后的次级优化时倾向于出现。但是，如果也揭示了其他玩家可以选择不同的选择（使每个人都变得更好），她的遗憾会得到缓解，因为盲人的一部分归因于他们。该项目将同时研究理论和实验性的遗憾和盲目的考虑如何影响经济结果，以及考虑这些考虑因素是否会导致理论上的预测更接近实验发现。该项目将有三个主要好处。首先，它将有助于我们理解责任和盲人属性会影响战略互动结果的情况。它还将帮助我们了解这种效果是否会增强福利或破坏性，并评估效果的幅度。其次，当在游戏中应用它们时，它将告知从修改到首选模型的收益。最后，它将在其他研究人员可以使用的游戏中产生有关遗憾和盲目的实验数据。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审查标准，被视为通过评估来获得珍贵的支持。