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.

该项目位于经济学和心理学的交叉点。它将研究在人们进行战略性互动的情况下，遗憾和责备感如何影响人类行为，从而使每个人的福利也取决于他人的行为。它表明，当人们感到对不良结果负有责任时，他们就会后悔自己的行为。另一方面，当他们认为自己应对不良结果负责时，他们就会责怪其他人。该项目将研究遗憾和责备之间的这种紧张关系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）增强我们对因责任分工而可能导致合作减少和低效结果的环境的理解，以及（iii）产生其他经济学和心理学研究人员可以使用的以前不存在的数据类型。这项拟议的工作将研究游戏中的遗憾。它将提出一种理论，在该理论中，战略互动的主体在做出选择时会同时考虑物质回报和他们的选择可能产生的遗憾。该理论解释了玩家（预期）后悔（针对她在游戏中的行为和由此产生的回报）的程度如何受到玩家之间对游戏结果的责任划分的影响。这是第一部考虑后悔的战略形式的作品，因为早期的作品将遗憾视为在单主体背景下进行分析，并将对手的行为视为世界状态。直觉如下。在决策理论背景下，结果完全是决策者 (DM) 选择和“运气”（世界最初未知的状态）的结果。鉴于 DM 对结果拥有权力，遗憾的感觉自然会产生。另一方面，博弈的结果是多个智能体策略交互的结果。因此，假设玩家可能不会（期望）体验到相同程度的后悔感，因为她可能对所有玩家行为的综合结果感到不那么负责。具体来说，假设在其他玩家的行为被揭露后，当她选择的行为被证明是次优时，玩家的后悔往往会出现。然而，如果还透露其他玩家可以做出不同的选择（让每个人都过得更好），那么她的遗憾就会减轻，因为部分责任归咎于他们。该项目将从理论上和实验上研究这种后悔和责备因素如何影响经济结果，以及考虑这些因素是否会导致理论预测更接近实验结果。该项目将具有三个主要好处。首先，它将有助于我们理解责任和指责的归属会影响战略互动结果的情况。它还将帮助我们了解这种影响是否会增加或损害福利，并衡量影响的程度。其次，它将通过强调在游戏中应用时对选择模型进行修改所带来的收益来为理论工作提供信息。最后，它将产生有关游戏中遗憾和责备的实验数据，供其他研究人员使用。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。