ESI Lecture Series, sponsored by IFREE

Friday lectures will be from 3:00-4:30 p.m. in Wilkinson Hall room #116.

February 2012

Feb. 10th, Brian Roberson, Ph.D. - Dynamic Special Interest Politics with Relational Contracts - Reception to follow

Abstract: This paper explores a model of special interest politics that allows for agreements among long-lived interest groups, political parties, and bureaucrats to be supported by informal relational contracts. Special interests and political parties may form agreements involving the exchange of campaign contributions in return for influence over agency actions, but, as agreements are non-binding, there is a temptation for the winning party to renege after each election. We characterize a relevant refinement of the efficient sequential equilibria. We find that political parties and special interests are able to form stable alliances that generate influence over agency decisions—agencies that acquiesce to the demands of political allies are rewarded in the agency funding process and shirking ones are punished. Furthermore, the political parties have incentive to form a system of advisory committees that are positioned to monitor the agencies and can be sold to the allied special interests.

Bio:  Brian Roberson is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University.  His research focuses on the strategic allocation of resources in environments in which the outcome of a given conflict is determined by the performance in multiple component conflicts and examines how—in applications from the economic, information, military, and political sciences—behavior depends on the structural linkages between the individual contests.

Feb. 17th, Stefan Szymanski, Ph.D. - Contests on a Line - Reception to follow

Abstract: This paper examines the idea of a Tullock contest between competitors on a line (in the manner of Hotelling). The problem is modeled as a two stage game in which competitors choose location and then choose how much to invest in the contest. The model shows that competitors have a tendency to toward differentiation when the welfare optimum is agglomeration. The model is also used to examine the importance of the concept of “competitive balance” in the contest, which is frequently considered crucial in the sports contest.

Bio: Stefan Szymanski moved to the University of Michigan in the Fall of 2011 as Stephen J. Galetti Professor of Sports Management. Prior to this he taught at London Business School, Imperial Business School, Cass Business School, all in London. His primary interest is the economics of professional and amateur sports. He has published widely in scholarly journals including the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Economic Literature, and his recent book Soccernomics (co-authored with Simon Kuper) made it into the New York Times bestseller list during the World Cup 2010.

Feb. 24th, John Tooby, Ph.D. - Lecture information will be posted at a later date. - Reception to follow

March 2012

Mar. 2nd, Jeff Smith, Ph.D. - Lecture information will follow at a later date - Reception to follow

Mar. 9th, Keith Murnighan, Ph.D. - On Greed - Reception to follow

Abstract: Greed is a central element in human existence. It is also frequently mentioned as a factor in many recent organizational and financial scandals. Thus, it was surprising to discover that empirical research on greed is rare. In contrast, however, a variety of different literatures present a rich conceptual foundation for understanding the dynamics of greed and greedy behavior. We focus on four of these literatures, broadly defined as historical/philosophical, economic, political, and social psychological/game theoretic, to investigate the concept of greed. We identify and explore three of its major characteristics, i.e., its moral, cognitive, and emotional elements. In addition, we present a decision process model to synthesize and analyze the dynamics of intuition, emotions, and reasoning that contribute to or inhibit greed. In essence, our discussion addresses the genesis, the catalysts, and the ramifications of greed.

Bio - J. Keith Murnighan is the Harold H. Hines Jr. Distinguished Professor of Risk Management at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from Purdue University. Prior to joining Kellogg in 1996, he taught at the Universities of Illinois and British Columbia. He has also had visiting appointments at the London Business School, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the University of Warwick, Coventry, England, Ecole Superieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales (ESSEC) outside Paris, and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

His papers have been published in many different academic journals, primarily in organizational behavior, social psychology, and economics. His most recent edited books are Social Psychology and Economics (with David De Cremer and Marcel Zeelenberg: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006) and Social Psychology and Organizations (with David De Cremer and Rolf van Dick; Routledge, 2011).

Mar. 16th, Alex Brown, Ph.D. - Experimental Analysis of Envy-Free Auctions - Reception to follow

Abstract: Economic concerns for equity have motivated game theorists to study envy-free mechanisms. Though not incentive compatible, these mechanisms implement in Nash equilibria efficient allocations at which no agent prefers the consumption of any other agent to their own. In experimental allocation decisions between two players, an envy-free first-price auction achieves similar efficiency and far greater no-envy than ultimatum bargaining. Both unsophisticated subject bidding and coordination failure are responsible for the departure from Nash equilibrium behavior in the envy-free auction, as bidding strategies vary greatly among subjects. Quantal response equilibrium and level- k models can explain most of this subjects bidding behavior.

Bio: Alex Brown is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, having joined there in Fall 2008.  He received his B.S. at Ohio State in 2003, and PhD at Caltech in 2008. Alex has a wide variety of research interests including experimental economics, behavioral economics, game theory, behavioral finance and industrial organization. His published papers appear in AEJ: Microeconomimcs, Annals of Finance, Economic Inquiry, Marketing Letters, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Mar. 23rd, Max Krasnow, Ph.D. - Evolution of direct reciprocity under uncertainty can explain human generosity in one-shot encounters - Reception to follow

Abstract: Are humans too generous? The discovery that subjects choose to incur costs to allocate benefits to others in  anonymous, one-shot economic games has posed an unsolved challenge to models of economic and evolutionary rationality. Using agent-based simulations, we show that such generosity is the necessary byproduct of selection on decision systems for regulating dyadic reciprocity under conditions of uncertainty. In deciding whether to engage in dyadic reciprocity, these systems must balance (i) the costs of mistaking a one-shot interaction for a repeated interaction (hence, risking a single chance of being exploited) with (ii) the far greater costs of mistaking a repeated interaction for a one-shot interaction (thereby precluding benefits from multiple future cooperative interactions). This asymmetry builds organisms naturally selected to cooperate even when exposed to cues that they are in one-shot interactions.

Bio: Max Krasnow is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Center for Evolutionary Psychology.  Max’s research focuses on human sociality and explores topics like the evolution of dyadic and n-party cooperation, the design of human cooperative psychology, the design of human social learning, and the design of human gathering psychology.  He has studied how simple ecological structures can select for human-like cooperative traits, and how models of ecologically rational solutions to cooperative adaptive problems well describe actual human cooperative behavior.

April 2012

Apr. 13th, Sean Crockett, Ph.D. - Lecture information will be posted at a later date - Reception to follow

May 2012

May 4th, Tim Groseclose, Ph.D. - Signaling Games and Media - Reception to follow

Abstract: Cai and Wang (2005) conducted a laboratory simulation of the Crawford-Sobel “strategic information transmission” game.  The researchers were most interested in observing the amount of information that senders in the game transmitted to receivers.  Consequently, they did not examine what I call the no-policy-bias implication of the game.  This implication is that—as the Nash equilibria to the game predict—the final policy that receivers choose, in expectation, should equal the policy that they would have chosen if the senders had sent no signal.  That is, the senders should not be able to systematically fool the receivers.  Contrary to the Nash equlibria, however, all versions of the experiment produced a policy bias.  The results can be explained by a well-established empirical regularity documented by behavioral economists.  This is that people tend to under-estimate the degree to which other people are strategic.  I apply these results to the question of media effects.  The Cai-Wang results—as well as the models of behavioral economists—suggest that real-world journalists should indeed be able to significantly affect the thoughts and behavior of real-world news consumers.

Bio: Dr. is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA. He has joint appointments in the political science and economics departments. He has held previous faculty appointments at Caltech, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

In 1987 Groseclose received his B.S. degree in Mathematical and Computational Sciences from Stanford University.  In 1992 he received his PhD from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (specializing in the School’s Political Economics program).

His research has focused on Congress, the media, and mathematical models of politics. He has recently published a book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. He has published more than two dozen scholarly articles, including some published in the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics.

He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife and two children.

Recent Speakers

Feb. 3rd, 2012 Alexandra Rosati - Evolutionary economics: Mapping decision-making traits in chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans - Watch Lecture

Dec. 9th, 2011 Diego Aycinena Abascal, Ph.D. - Auctions with Endogenous Participation - Watch Lecture

Dec. 2nd, 2011 John Tomasi, Ph.D. - Democratic Legitimacy and Economic Liberty - Watch Lecture

Nov. 18th, Hersh Shefrin, Ph.D. - Systemic Risk and Sentiment - Watch lecture

Nov. 11th, 2011 Mark M. Bykowsky, Ph.D. - A Market-based Approach to Establishing Licensing Rules: Licensed Versus Unlicensed Use of Spectrum Federal Communications Commission - please watch this video before lecture - Watch lecture

Nov. 4th, 2011 Melissa Thomasson, Ph.D.  - Saving Babies: The Contribution of Sheppard-Towner to the Decline in Infant Mortality in the 1920s - Watch lecture

Oct. 28th, 2011 Gabriele Camera, Ph.D.- The coordination value of monetary exchange: Experimental evidence. - Watch Lecture

Oct. 21st, 2011 Parker Ballinger, Ph.D. - Individual versus Social Learning: The Importance of Demonstrability - Watch lecture

Oct. 7th, 2011 David Budescu, Ph.D. - Taking Wason to the market:  Studies of the Wason selection task in competitive markets - Watch Lecture

Sept. 16th, 2011 Price Fishback, Ph.D. - Comparisons Across Time and Space of Poverty and Social Insurance Programs. - Watch lecture

Sept. 9th, 2011 - Anne Villamil, Ph.D. - The Effects of Credit Subsidies on Development - Watch Lecture

Sept. 1st, 2011 – Gad Saad, Ph.D. – The Consuming Instinct 

Apr. 29th, 2011 Donald Shoup - The High Cost of Free Parking - Watch Lecture 

Apr. 8th, 2011 Kevin McCabe, Ph.D. – Experiments on the role of third parties on redistribution decisions. For further reading please see: Shared Experience and Third-Party Decisions: A Laboratory Result, Legitimacy in the lab – The separate and joint effects of earned roles and earned endowments in third-party redistribution, Whose money is it anyway? Ingroups and distributive behavior. - Watch lecture

Apr. 1st, 2011 Michael Gurven, Ph.D. - Experimental investigation of fairness and altruism norms in small-scale societies - Further reading: Culture sometimes matters: Intra-cultural variation in pro-social behavior among Tsimane Amerindians and Collective Action in Action: Prosocial Behavior in and out of the Laboratory - Watch lecture

Mar. 25th, 2011 Anya Savikhin, Ph.D.- Conducting Field Experiments with Preschool-Aged Children: New Approaches - Watch lecture

Mar. 11th, 2011 Terry Anderson, Ph.D. -"I Own This Place”: Property Rights for Native Americans. - Watch lecture

Mar. 4th, 2011 Blake LeBaron, Ph.D. - Heterogeneous Gain Learning and the Dynamics of Asset Prices - Watch lecture

Feb. 18th, 2011 Catherine Eckel, Ph.D. - Giving to Government: Voluntary Taxation in the Lab - Watch lecture

Feb. 11th, 2011 Jim Engle-Warnick, Ph.D. - Social Learning and Risk and Ambiguity Preferences - Watch lecture

Feb. 4th, 2011 Peter Boettke, Ph.D. - Polycentrism and Gargantua: Which Model Best Provides Public Education? - Watch lecture

Dec. 10th, 2010 Deirdre McCloskey, Ph.D. – Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World, and Why a Change in Talk Does - Watch lecture

Nov. 5th, 2010 James Choi, Ph.D. – Religious Identity and Economic Behavior - Watch lecture

Oct. 29th, 2010 Svetlana Pevnitskaya, Ph.D. - The Effect of Access to Clean Technology on Pollution Reduction: an Experiment. Watch lecture

Oct. 22nd, 2010 Craig Yirush, Ph.D. – Indigenous Rights in Early Modern Perspective. Watch lecture

Oct. 15th, 2010 John Duffy, Ph.D. – A Dynamic General Equilibrium Approach to Asset Pricing Experiments. Watch lecture

Oct. 5th, 2010 Andreas Wilke, Ph.D. - Past and Present Environments: The Evolution of Decision Making

Sept. 24th, 2010 David Schmidtz, Ph.D. - What is Nonideal Theory?

Sept. 10th, 2010 Charles Thomas, Ph.D. - Equilibrium Behavior in a Model of Multilateral Negotiations - Watch lecture

May 7th, 2010 Jim Gentle, Ph.D. - The Contribution of Jumps to the Volatility of Asset Prices - Watch lecture

Apr. 23rd, 2010 Robert Kurzban Ph.D. - Adaptationist Morality - Watch lecture

Apr. 16th, 2010 Menas Kafatos - Climate Change, Facts and Hype: Hazards and Impacts and What does the Future hold?

Apr. 9th, 2010 Gregory Waymire, Ph.D. - Can Trust Be Sustained in an Uncertain World When Individuals Have Machiavellian Intelligence? - Watch lecture

Mar. 26th, 2010 John Rust, Ph.D. - The Flat Rental Puzzle - Watch lecture

Mar. 19th, 2010 Jason Aimone, Ph.D. - Endogenous Group Formation Through Sacrificial Costs - Watch lecture

Mar. 12th, 2010 Deirdre McCloskey, Ph.D. - Linguinomics: Thoughts and Theorems about Language in the Economy

Feb. 26th, 2010 Ryan Oprea, Ph.D. - A Continuous Dilemma- Watch lecture

Feb. 19th, 2010 Oliver Goodenough, Ph.D. - Strategic Mechanisms, Functional Modeling and Experimental Design in Neurolaw. Watch lecture 

Feb. 12th, 2010 Henry Butler, Ph.D. – Are State Consumer Protection Acts Really Mini-FTC Acts? Watch lecture

Feb. 5th, 2010 Kevin McCabe, Ph.D. - Watch lecture

Dec. 2nd, 2009 Jeffrey Tollaksen, Ph.D. - New Ideas About the Nature of Time -  Watch lecture

Nov. 13th, 2009 Sarah F. Brosnan, Ph.D. - An Evolutionary Perspective on the Perception and Utilization of Property . Watch lecture

Nov. 6th, 2009 James Konow Ph.D. – Just Luck:  An Experimental Study of Risk Taking and Fairness

Oct. 30th, 2009 Jerome Busemeyer Ph.D. - A Computational Model of the Attention Process Used to Generate Decision Weights. Watch lecture 

Oct. 26th, 2009 Harold Demsetz - Externalities and Social Cost . Watch lecture

Oct. 23rd, 2009 Dan Kovenock Ph.D. –   The Optimal Defense of Networks of Targets . Watch lecture

Oct. 9th, 2009 Monica Smith, Ph.D. - A cognitive History of Material Objects:  The Archaeology of Possession, Inheritance, and Value . Watch lecture

Sept. 25, 2009 Bart J. Wilson, Ph.D. - The Ecological and Civil Mainsprings of Property: An Experimental Economic History of Whalers’ Rules of Capture

Sept. 18th, 2009 Thomas W. Hazlett, Ph.D.  – Tragedy TV: Rights Fragmentation and the Junk Band Problem . Watch lecture

May 20th, 2009 Gerd Gigerenzer Ph.D. - Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences.  Watch lecture

May 7th, 2009 Matt Ridley Ph.D. - The Role of Exchange and Specialization in Human Prosperity. Watch lecture

Apr. 24th, 2009 Dan Bogart Ph.D. - Parliament and the Adaptability of Property Rights:  A case study of Estate Acts and the London Property Market. Watch lecture

Apr. 17th, 2009 Jasmina Arifovic Ph.D. - A Behavioral Model for Mechanism Design: Individual Evolutionary Learning. Watch lecture

Apr. 3rd, 2009 John Dickhaut Ph.D.- High Stakes Behavior with Low Payoffs: Inducing Preferences with Holt-Laury Gambles . Watch lecture

Mar. 27th, 2009 Arun Sood Ph.D. – Self Cleansing Intrusion Tolerance . Addition information for lecture. Watch lecture

Mar. 20th, 2009 John Ledyard Ph.D. – Individual Evolutionary Learning, Other-regarding Preferences, and the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism. Watch lecture

Mar. 13th, 2009 Gregory Waymire Ph.D. - Transaction Records, Impersonal Exchange, and Division of Labor. Watch lecture

Mar. 6th, 2009 James Murphy Ph.D. – Rent Dissipation in Competitive Fisheries: An Experimental Analysis. Watch lecture

Feb. 27th, 2009 Amnon Rapoport Ph.D. - Coordination in Large-scale Networks under Two different Information Structures: A Laboratory Study. Watch lecture

Feb. 13th, 2009 Elena Asparouhova Ph.D. - Cognitive Biases, Ambiguity Aversion and Asset Pricing in Financial Markets. Watch lecture

Feb. 6th, 2009 Cary Deck Ph.D. - Sequentially Pricing Multiple Products: Theory and Experiments. Watch lecture

Jan. 16th, 2009 Jean-Laurent Rosenthal Ph.D. – Market for Mortgages. Watch lecture

Dec. 5th, 2008 Hillard Kaplan Ph.D. - Evolution of Aging. Watch lecture

Nov. 21st, 2008 Michael McBride Ph.D. -  Conflict and the Shadow of the Future: An Experimental Study.  Background and theoretical basis. Watch lecture

Nov. 7th, 2008 Larry Iannaccone Ph.D. - Looking Backward: A Cross-National Study of Religious Trends. Watch lecture

Nov. 6th, 2008 Barry Chiswick Ph.D. - Why is the Payoff to Schooling Smaller for Immigrants? Watch lecture

Oct. 31st, 2008 John Dickhaut Ph.D. - Efficient Markets and Drift: A Computational Approach. Watch lecture

Oct. 24th, 2008  Abel Winn Ph.D. - Framing Effects in Two-Side Clock Auctions. Watch lecture

Oct. 17th, 2008  Eric Schoenberg Ph.D. - Relative Wealth Concerns and Asset Bubbles: An Experimental Approach. Watch lecture

Oct. 3rd, 2008 Peter Bossaerts Ph.D. - Exploring the Nature of "Trading Intuition"

Sept. 15th, 2008  Thomas A.  Rietz Ph.D. - Product market efficiency:  The bright side of myopic, uninformed, and passive external finance