2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The experimental economics of decentralization
| Project/Area Number |
20K01553
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
Veszteg Robert 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 教授 (30597753)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | bargaining / cooperative game theory / laboratory experiments / Nash bargaining solution / unstructured bargaining |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In 2021, we have continued our experimental research on decentralized (or unstructured) bilateral bargaining.
On the one hand, we have successfully published our results related to the effect of the joint production stage on bargaining outcomes in the journal of Games and Economic Behavior. On the other, we have created a new experimental design to study how bargaining parties perceive the bargaining situation recreated in the experimental laboratory. In particular, whether they focus on the objects to be distributed in the bargaining process or rather on the direct and indirect consequences of those objects on monetary earnings. We have carried out a large number of experimental sessions and collected data for statistical analysis at LEEP (the laboratory of the Paris School of Economics).
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
The restrictions on social interaction and international travel imposed by the authorities have significantly delayed our research. We wish to emphasize here that online interaction is an extremely poor substitute for controlled laboratory experimentation and in-person offline interaction with other researchers working on similar research projects.
In spite of the challenges created by external forces, we hope that 2022 will allow for more interaction both with colleagues and experimental participants. Fortunately, many countries around the world have a much more relaxed approach to social interaction already.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
We are currently working on the data collected throughout the previous year and we will soon be ready to submit our results for publication to an academic journal. Also, the experimental design for the next step in our research is ready, so we can soon start running the related experimental sessions.
In this new wave of experiments, our goal is to test the empirical relevance of axioms (on which the theory of cooperative bargaining is built). While we have already addressed this research question at the start of our project, we now are going to take a much more direct approach by letting bargaining parties negotiate directly on the properties (axioms) that the bargaining outcome should fulfill. This method will not only create an important robustness test for our earlier findings, but also a general test for the interpretation of theoretical research in cooperative game theory.
In parallel, we are also working on a novel experimental design to test how people perceive conflict situations. In contract to existing research, our goal is to make the environment as intuitive and user-friendly as possible without reducing the experimental control. This research will shed light on the intensity of people's social preferences.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Restrictions imposed by authorities on social interaction made experimental research challenging.
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