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

该奖项资助群体和个人在一些重要的经济环境中进行战略决策的研究：多边谈判、少数强大公司的市场以及信息不对称的市场(市场的一方比市场的另一方拥有更好的信息)。这三条探索线背后的共同主题是，使用两个人的团队参与旨在模拟所述环境的实验室实验。目标是更好地了解这些环境中的决策过程。因为队友必须通过交谈来协调团队的决策，所以使用团队可以在他们做出决策时实时记录代理的思维过程。由此产生的对话可以用来在对观察到的行为的相互矛盾的解释之间进行梳理。简而言之，目标是开发目标环境中代理思维过程和行为的现实模型。这项研究的第二个重要动机是，在这些环境中做出的许多决策(如果不是大多数的话)都涉及到这样或那样的团队决策(自由互动的团队或顾问和被咨询者互动)。一种常见的说法是，对于我们研究的经济环境，团队学习的战略行为要比个人快得多，在许多方面也更理性。这项研究研究了这一说法是否有效，如果是的话，团队合作如何提高理性。PIs还研究团队的高度“理性”是否扩展到PIs和其他研究团队以前研究的领域以外的新领域。虽然众所周知，认知能力在经济成功中起着重要作用，但人们越来越认识到关键人格特征对经济成果的重要性。认知能力和个性特征对报告结果的作用也将被研究，特别强调单个团队成员的特征是如何结合在一起影响团队绩效的。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。这项研究的另一个影响是展示了使用团队对话和关于代理的个人特征的信息来更好地理解决策者在战略环境中的行为的效用。由于许多类型的社会科学都包括对战略环境中人类行为的研究，该项目将对跨学科研究社区具有价值。鉴于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重要的现实意义。因此，就团队行为与个人行为的不同而言，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.