Collaborative Research: Experimental Studies of Strategic Decision Making by Groups and Individuals

该奖项资助研究在一些重要的经济环境中群体和个人的战略决策：多边谈判，少数强大公司的市场，以及信息不对称的市场（市场的一方比另一方拥有更好的信息）。这三条调查路线的共同主题是使用两人团队参与实验室实验，旨在模拟所讨论的环境。目标是更好地理解这些环境中的决策制定过程。因为团队成员必须通过交谈来协调团队的决策，所以使用团队可以实时记录代理在做出决策时的思维过程。由此产生的对话可用于对观察到的行为的相互矛盾的解释进行分类。简而言之，目标是开发智能体在目标环境中的思维过程和行为的现实模型。研究的第二个重要动机是，在这些环境中做出的许多（如果不是大多数的话）决策都涉及团队决策（自由互动的团队或顾问和被顾问互动）。一种常见的说法是，在我们所研究的这种经济环境中，团队学会策略性行为的速度要快得多，而且在许多方面比个人更理性。该研究研究了这种说法是否成立，如果成立，团队游戏如何提高理性。pi还研究了团队的“合理性”是否会扩展到pi和其他研究团队之前研究过的新领域。众所周知，认知能力在经济成功中起着重要作用，但越来越多的人认识到关键人格特征对经济成果的重要性。认知能力和人格特征对报告结果的作用也将被研究，特别强调个体团队成员的特征如何结合起来影响团队绩效。这项研究有几个更广泛的影响。研究生将参与该项目，并将学习经济学实验室实验的研究方法。该研究的另一个影响是展示了利用团队对话和代理人个人特征信息来更好地理解战略环境中决策者行为的效用。由于许多种类的社会科学都包括对战略环境中人类行为的研究，因此该项目对跨学科研究团体来说将是有价值的。考虑到许多重大决策是由团队而不是个人做出的，这项研究也具有相当大的实际重要性。因此，团队的行为与个人不同，了解这一点很重要。

This award funds research on strategic decision making by groups and individuals in a number of economically important settings: multilateral bargaining, markets with a small number of powerful firms, and markets with asymmetric information (one side of the market has better information than the other side of the market). The common theme underlying these three lines of inquiry is the use of two person teams participating in laboratory experiments designed to mimic the environments in question. The goal is to better understand decision making processes in these environments. Because teammates must talk to coordinate their team's decisions, using teams provides a real time accounting of agents' thought processes as they make decisions. The resulting dialogues can be used to sort out between competing explanations for the observed behavior. In short, the goal is to develop realistic models of agents thought processes and behavior in the target environments. A second, important, motivation for the research is that many, if not most, decisions made in these environments involve team decision making of one sort or another (freely interacting teams or advisors and advisees interacting). A common claim is that for economic environments like those we study, teams learn to behave strategically much faster, and in a number of ways more rationally, than individuals. The research studies if this claim is valid and, if so, how team play improves rationality. The PIs also study whether the heightened 'rationality' of teams extends to new domains beyond those previously studied by the PIs and by other research teams. While it is well known that cognitive ability plays an important role in economic success there is growing recognition of the importance of key personality characteristics on economic outcomes as well. The role of cognitive ability and personality characteristic on the outcomes reported will be studied as well, with particular emphasis on how the characteristics of individual team members combine to affect team performance.The research has several broader impacts. Graduate students will participate in the project and will learn about research methods for lab experiments in economics. Another impact of the research is to demonstrate the utility of using team dialogues and information about agents' personal characteristics to better understand decision makers' behavior in strategic environments. Because many kinds of social science include the study of human behavior in strategic environments, the project will be valuable to an interdisciplinary research community. The research is of considerable practical importance as well given that many major decisions are made by teams as opposed to individuals. As such to the extent that teams behave differently from individuals this is important to know.