2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Better foundations for better social institutions - theory and experiments
| Project/Area Number |
17K03634
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Waseda University |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
Veszteg Robert 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 准教授 (30597753)
|
|---|
| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
船木 由喜彦 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 教授 (50181433)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
|
| Keywords | decentralization / bargaining / matching markets / social learning / laboratory experiments / human decision-making |
|---|
| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Our research project explores three problems with the help of the experimental method.
* (decentralized bargaining) The statistical analysis based on the collected data (in Tokyo and in Paris) support efficiency, symmetry, independence of irrelevant alternatives and monotonicity, and reject scale invariance. We find that individual rationality and midpoint domination are violated by a significant fraction of the observed agreements. Interestingly, results are robust to the cultural differences between Japan and France.
We have carried out additional experimental sessions in both cities this year. The newly gathered data are meant to check the robustness of our original findings by using neutral instructions. All our previously reported findings are robust.
* (decentralized matching) We have carefully revised and resubmitted our research paper on decentralized matching this year. The changes have mostly affected the statistical analysis and the presentation of our findings. Our paper has been accepted for publication at Experimental Economics.
* (decentralized learning) We have conducted a number of additional experimental sessions in FY2017 and spent the following year exploring the collected data. We received valuable feedback at the SAET conference. Currently, our main conclusion is that social learning does happen, but information transition is slow and noisy. We also find that human behavior in social learning can not satisfactorily be described by any of the two theoretical models that appear in the literature (perfect Bayesian learning, and completely naive learning).
|
| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We have gathered enough data for our research through controlled laboratory experiments. We have summarized most of our findings in academic papers and have even managed to publish some of them in international outlets with high impact factor (Journal of Economic Psychology: 1.338; Experimental Economics:2.267).
In this research, I rely extensively on the two computer rooms that serve as experimental laboratory at the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, and also on my small (but efficient) network of coauthors from abroad. Both factors help significantly to keep this project on track.
|
| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
During the final year of the research project we wish to focus on turning our findings into international peer-reviewed publications. Our experience shows that referees often ask for data from additional experimental sessions, therefore we expect to run a number of experiments to show the robustness of our earlier results and/or to explore new paths of research around human decision-making in decentralized and unconstrained environments.
As mentioned above, our current findings invite for additional research related to the proposed research topics.
* (decentralized bargaining) We are planning to create a new experimental design to directly test the empirical relevance of the axioms behind the theory of cooperative bargaining. This novel approach promises new insights into human behavior.
* (decentralized learning) So far, we have found that human behavior in social learning can not satisfactorily be described by any of the two theoretical models that very often appear both in the theoretical and empirical literature (that is, perfect Bayesian learning, and completely naive learning). These rather puzzling results call for additional explanation for the observed behavior and for a new experimental design.
|
| Causes of Carryover |
We have intentionally saved (kept) some money to be able to run additional experimental sessions in case journal editors (and/or referees) require us to do so for the possible publication of our results.
|
