Belief-dependent preferences and reputation: Experimental analysis of a repeated trust game

Attanasi, Giuseppe; Battigalli, Pierpaolo; Manzoni, Elena; Nagel, Rosemarie

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2018.12.002

Cited by 33 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…See the discussion inAttanasi et al (2016), p. 649, where they argue that role dependence of guilt preferences is plausible in asymmetric games (see, e.g.,Attanasi et al, 2013Attanasi et al, , 2018, for indirect experimental evidence corroborating the assumption). In particular, they discuss how the assumption…”

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confidence: 61%

Embezzlement and guilt aversion

Attanasi

Rimbaud

Villeval

2019

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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Psychological game theory can contribute to renew the analysis of unethical behavior by providing insights on the nature of the moral costs of dishonesty. We investigate the moral costs of embezzlement in situations where donors need intermediaries to transfer their donations to recipients and where donations can be embezzled before they reach the recipients. We design a novel three-player Embezzlement Mini-Game to study whether intermediaries in the laboratory suffer from guilt aversion and whether guilt aversion affects the decision to embezzle. We show that the proportion of guilt-averse intermediaries is the same irrespective of the direction of guilt and guilt aversion reduces embezzlement. Structural estimates indicate no difference in the effect of guilt aversion toward the donor and toward the recipient on intermediaries' behavior. This is striking as embezzlement affects the earnings of the recipient but not those of the donor. It shows that guilt aversion matters even when decisions have no direct monetary consequences.

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confidence: 61%

Embezzlement and guilt aversion

Attanasi

Rimbaud

Villeval

2019

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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“…The main treatment variable is the value we assign to k i = k −i , the concavity of the investment cost function in eqs. (8) and (12). We have two main treatments: High-cost, with k i = k −i = 0.6, and Low-cost, with k i = k −i = 0.4.…”

Section: Behavioral Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…(1) and the investment cost function in eq. (8). To achieve saliency, in the experimental game we rescale players' payoff function U i in eq.…”

Section: Behavioral Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Strategic Ethics: Altruism without the Other-Regarding Confound

Attanasi¹,

My²,

Georgantzı́s³

et al. 2019

Revue Économique

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In a two-stage investment-effort game, we model altruistic investment in another agent's capacity to benefit from synergies between the two agents' efforts. Contrary to most models in the literature on altruism, we assume that agents who invest in others have no direct utility from their giving behavior, ruling out any genuinely altruistic component in their utility function, i.e., stemming from other-regarding preferences. Furthermore, we disentangle this "strategic ethics" from reputational effects yielding incentives for a more pro-social action in the present in order to favor Pareto-superior outcomes in the future. Isolated consumption of one's own benefits from own efforts is the worst equilibrium, which is globally stable and is shown to exist independently of the investment cost. However, for a low enough investment cost, there exist two alternative equilibria: an unstable intermediate equilibrium in which both agents make positive complementarity-building investments, and a stable one in which both agents invest all they can to complementarity building. Both equilibria Pareto-dominate the aforementioned no-investment equilibrium. Results of a laboratory experiment confirm our behavioral prediction that, for a low enough investment cost, subjects coordinate on positive complementarity-building investment, which in turn boosts their effort in the second stage. The latter increases in both own and others' complementarity-building investment, as predicted by our model. All this holds independently of subjects' risk and inequity aversion. The latter suggests that complementarity-building investment is not motivated by altruism. Rather, it is purely strategic.

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“…Our approach is related to psychological game theory [14], in which utilities are belief-dependent and beliefs are updated as the game unfolds [1,[15][16][17]. This is also the case in our model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Team Production and Esteem: A Dual Selves Model with Belief-Dependent Preferences

Greiff¹

2019

Games

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We propose a dual selves model to integrate affective responses and belief-dependent emotions into game theory. We apply our model to team production and model a worker as being composed of a rational self, who chooses effort, and an emotional self, who expresses esteem. Similar to psychological game theory, utilities depend on beliefs, but only indirectly. More concretely, emotions affect utilities, and the expression of emotions depends on updated beliefs. Modeling affective responses as actions chosen by the emotional self allows us to apply standard game-theoretic solution concepts. The model reveals that with incomplete information about abilities, workers only choose high effort if esteem is expressed based on interpersonal comparisons and if the preference for esteem is a status preference.

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Belief-dependent preferences and reputation: Experimental analysis of a repeated trust game

Cited by 33 publications

References 32 publications

Embezzlement and guilt aversion

Embezzlement and guilt aversion

Strategic Ethics: Altruism without the Other-Regarding Confound

Team Production and Esteem: A Dual Selves Model with Belief-Dependent Preferences

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