Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Two Experiments on the Behavioral Equivalence of Dirty Faces Games

经济学博士论文研究：脏脸游戏行为等价性的两个实验

• 批准号: 2243268
• 负责人: Thomas Palfrey
• 金额: $ 2.36万
• 依托单位: California Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-02-01 至 2025-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2243268&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Two

One of the main goals of behavioral economics is to better understand the implications of human cognitive limitations on behavior in strategic settings related to economic, social, and political competition. This branch of behavioral economics, behavioral game theory, focuses on how people form expectations in strategic environments about the anticipated behavior of other individuals. This project will experimentally investigate the “dirty faces game”, a workhorse example of a strategic environment where individuals can observe some actions by other players in the game that enable them to make inferences leading to more informed decisions. This is a simple but illustrative game that models situations where people update their beliefs and make decisions based on others’ past behavior, such as choosing a restaurant or purchasing a new product by reading reviews by other people. Classical theory about behavior in games, based on assumptions of perfect rationality, makes behaviorally implausible predictions in this game. Relaxing the assumption of perfect rationality leads to drastically different predictions about behavior in the dirty faces game, which makes it an ideal test bed for a new “dynamic cognitive hierarchy theory” (DCH) that predicts that, in dirty faces games, players will generally behave differently under two different conventional experimental protocols (direct response vs. strategy method), while the standard theory does not predict any behavioral difference. This project designs two experiments to detect the behavioral differences predicted by DCH in these games. A long-run goal of this project is not only to test the theory, but also to provide insights to policy designs that take account of cognitive limitations. Armed with improved theoretical models, policy makers can design more cognitively robust auctions, tax schemes, regulations, and other mechanisms to improve economic performance. The dirty faces game is a strategic environment where each individual within a group of individuals has either a dirty or a clean face and can see all other players’ faces but not their own faces. Over a sequence of decision periods, each individual can take an action that provides some information about the faces they see, and the ultimate goal of each individual is to learn their own face type from observing the others’ actions. At the beginning of the game, an honest announcement is made by an observer about whether or not there is at least one dirty face. From the standard game-theoretic perspective, players will eventually learn whether their face is dirty or clean. Moreover, the extensive and strategic form representations of this game are strategically equivalent and make the same classical predictions. However, from the psychological perspective, the mental processes are completely different---in the strategic form representation, players make inferences based on hypothetical events while in the extensive form representation, players can make statistical inferences based on observed behavior. In a two-person dirty faces game, equilibrium theory predicts players will know their face type within two periods---regardless of the payoffs and the representations (extensive form vs. strategic form). Specifically, DCH predicts both the payoff structure and game-form representation will jointly affect behavior: (1) players will behave closer to the equilibrium in the extensive form representation if they are sufficiently impatient and payoffs are sufficiently low; and (2) the representation effect exists depends on the number of decision periods (horizon). Experiment 1 uses a 2x2 design where the representations (extensive vs. strategic form) and the payoffs (high vs. low) are systematically varied. Experiment 2 manipulates the horizon of the game. DCH predicts when the horizon of the game is shorter, the representation effect detected in Experiment 1 will vanish.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.

行为经济学的主要目标之一是更好地理解人类认知限制对与经济、社会和政治竞争相关的战略环境中的行为的影响。行为经济学的这个分支，即行为博弈论，重点研究人们如何在战略环境中形成对其他人预期行为的预期。该项目将实验性地研究“脏脸游戏”，这是一个战略环境的主力示例，个人可以观察游戏中其他玩家的一些行为，从而使他们能够做出推断，从而做出更明智的决策。这是一个简单但说明性的游戏，它模拟了人们更新信念并根据他人过去的行为做出决策的情况，例如通过阅读其他人的评论来选择餐厅或购买新产品。关于游戏中行为的经典理论基于完美理性的假设，在该游戏中做出了行为上令人难以置信的预测。放宽完美理性的假设会导致对脏脸游戏中行为的预测截然不同，这使其成为新的“动态认知层次理论”（DCH）的理想试验台，该理论预测，在脏脸游戏中，玩家通常会在两种不同的传统实验协议（直接反应与策略方法）下表现不同，而标准理论并没有预测任何行为差异。该项目设计了两个实验来检测 DCH 在这些游戏中预测的行为差异。该项目的长期目标不仅是测试理论，而且为考虑认知局限性的政策设计提供见解。借助改进的理论模型，政策制定者可以设计认知上更加稳健的拍卖、税收计划、法规和其他机制来改善经济绩效。脏脸游戏是一种战略环境，一群人中的每个人都有一张脏脸或一张干净的脸，并且可以看到所有其他玩家的脸，但看不到自己的脸。在一系列决策期间，每个人都可以采取一项行动，提供有关他们所看到的面孔的一些信息，每个人的最终目标是通过观察其他人的行为来了解自己的面孔类型。在游戏开始时，观察者会诚实地宣布是否至少有一张脏脸。从标准博弈论的角度来看，玩家最终会知道自己的脸是脏还是干净。此外，该游戏的广泛和战略形式表示在战略上是等效的，并做出相同的经典预测。然而，从心理学的角度来看，心理过程是完全不同的——在策略形式表征中，玩家根据假设事件做出推断，而在扩展形式表征中，玩家可以根据观察到的行为进行统计推断。在两人脏脸游戏中，均衡理论预测玩家将在两个时期内知道自己的脸型——无论收益和表征如何（扩展形式与策略形式）。具体而言，DCH 预测收益结构和博弈形式表征将共同影响行为：（1）如果玩家足够不耐烦且收益足够低，他们的行为将更接近扩展形式表征中的均衡； (2)代表性效应的存在取决于决策周期(horizo​​n)的数量。实验 1 使用 2x2 设计，其中表示（广泛与战略形式）和回报（高与低）系统地变化。实验 2 操纵游戏的视野。 DCH 预测，当游戏的时间较短时，实验 1 中检测到的代表性效应将消失。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。