Research Seminar Microeconomics"Pre-planning and its Effects on Repeated Dishonest Behavior: An Experiment" AND "The Central Influencer Theorem"Subhasish M. Chowdhury (U Bath)
25 January 2018
The Microeconomics Research Seminar welcomes
Subhasish M. Chowdhury (U Bath),
who will present his work on
“Pre-planning and its Effects on Repeated Dishonest Behavior: An Experiment” (Project 1)
and “The Central Influencer Theorem” (Project 2).
Place: Room 0029, Von-Melle-Park 5
Hour: 17:15 - 18:45
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Abstract (Project 1):
We investigate experimentally the effects of the opportunity to pre-plan one’s action on dynamic (im)moral decision makings, more specifically, whether it invites more consistent or compensatory behavior. There were two treatments where either the subjects were informed ex-ante that they would have two sequential opportunities to tell lies for monetary gains, or they were informed about the opportunity to tell a lie only prior to each stage. We find that when it was not possible to pre-plan, repeated opportunities to tell a lie resulted in subjects telling a lie even for a smaller monetary gain, i.e., they got more vulnerable to a temptation to behave dishonestly. However, when pre-planning was possible, the proportion of subjects telling a lie was relatively high in the first stage, and then it declined sharply in the next stage. We argue that the possibility of pre-planning invites a compensatory, instead of consistent, action, and thus induced more dishonest responses in the first stage and fewer in the second. Overall – considering both stages – more subjects told lies with the opportunity to pre-plan.
Abstract (Project 2):
We analyze a spatial voting model without the “one person, one vote” restriction. In equilibrium, two groups endogenously emerge: players in one group try to implement more leftist policy, while those in the other group more rightist one. Since the larger group suffers more severe free-riding problem, the equilibrium policy does not converge to the center if the larger group does not have a cost advantage. We demonstrate how the location of the center (i.e., the steady-state point) depends the convexities of the utility and cost functions.