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Social Preference
Social preferences describe the human tendency to not only care about one's own material payoff, but also the reference group's payoff or/and the intention that leads to the payoff. Social preferences are studied extensively in behavioral and experimental economics and social psychology. Types of social preferences include altruism, fairness, reciprocity, and inequity aversion. The field of economics originally assumed that humans were rational economic actors, and as it became apparent that this was not the case, the field began to change. The research of social preferences in economics started with lab experiments in 1980, where experimental economists found subjects' behavior deviated systematically from self-interest behavior in economic games such as ultimatum game and dictator game. These experimental findings then inspired various new economic models to characterize agent's altruism, fairness and reciprocity concern between 1990 and 2010. More recently, there are growing amou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Altruism
Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for the welfare and/or happiness of other human beings or animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious and secular worldviews. However, the object(s) of concern vary among cultures and religions. In an extreme case, altruism may become a synonym of selflessness, which is the opposite of selfishness. The word "altruism" was popularized (and possibly coined) by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as ''altruisme'', for an antonym of egoism. He derived it from the Italian ''altrui'', which in turn was derived from Latin ''alteri'', meaning " other people" or "somebody else". Altruism in biological observations in field populations of the day organisms is an individual performing an action which is at a cost to themselves (e.g., pleasure and quality of life, time, probability of survival or reproduction), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Goods Game
The public goods game is a standard of experimental economics. In the basic game, subjects secretly choose how many of their private tokens to put into a public pot. The tokens in this pot are multiplied by a factor (greater than one and less than the number of players, N) and this " public good" payoff is evenly divided among players. Each subject also keeps the tokens they do not contribute. Introduction Public goods games are fundamental in experimental economics. The nature of the experiment is incentives and the problem of free riding. Public goods games investigate the incentives of individuals who free-ride off individuals who are contributing to the common pool. A public goods game investigates behavioural economics and the actions of the players in the game. In this process, it seeks to use behavioural economics to understand the decisions of its players. It extends further to free-riding, which has far-reaching applications to environmental, managerial and social econ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inequity Aversion
Inequity aversion (IA) is the preference for fairness and resistance to incidental inequalities. The social sciences that study inequity aversion include sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, and ethology. Human studies Inequity aversion research on humans mostly occurs in the discipline of economics though it is also studied in sociology. Research on inequity aversion began in 1978 when studies suggested that humans are sensitive to inequities in favor of as well as those against them, and that some people attempt overcompensation when they feel "guilty" or unhappy to have received an undeserved reward. A more recent definition of inequity aversion (resistance to inequitable outcomes) was developed in 1999 by Fehr and Schmidt. They postulated that people make decisions so as to minimize inequity in outcomes. Specifically, consider a setting with individuals who receive pecuniary outcomes ''xi''. Then the utility to person ''i'' would be given by :U_i(\) = x_i - \frac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Reciprocans
''Homo reciprocans'', or reciprocating human, is the concept in some economic theories of humans as cooperative actors who are motivated by improving their environment through positive reciprocity (rewarding other individuals) or negative reciprocity (punishing other individuals), even in situations without foreseeable benefit for themselves. This concept stands in contrast to the idea of ''homo economicus'', which states the opposite theory that human beings are exclusively motivated by self-interest. However, the two ideas can be reconciled if we assume that utility functions of the ''homo economicus'' can have parameters that are dependent to the perceived utility of other agents (such as one's spouse or children). Kropotkin Russian theorist Peter Kropotkin wrote about the concept of "mutual aid" in the early part of the 20th century. Examples The ''Homo reciprocans'' concept states that human being players interact with a propensity to cooperate. They will compromise in or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Economicus
The term ''Homo economicus'', or economic man, is the portrayal of humans as agents who are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested, and who pursue their subjectively defined ends optimally. It is a word play on ''Homo sapiens'', used in some economic theories and in pedagogy. In game theory, ''Homo economicus'' is often modelled through the assumption of perfect rationality. It assumes that agents always act in a way that maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer, and are capable of arbitrarily complex deductions towards that end. They will always be capable of thinking through all possible outcomes and choosing that course of action which will result in the best possible result. The rationality implied in ''Homo economicus'' does not restrict what sort of preferences are admissible. Only naive applications of the ''Homo economicus'' model assume that agents know what is best for their long-term physical and mental health. For example, an agent's u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Altruism
Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for the welfare and/or happiness of other human beings or animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious and secular worldviews. However, the object(s) of concern vary among cultures and religions. In an extreme case, altruism may become a synonym of selflessness, which is the opposite of selfishness. The word "altruism" was popularized (and possibly coined) by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as ''altruisme'', for an antonym of egoism. He derived it from the Italian ''altrui'', which in turn was derived from Latin ''alteri'', meaning " other people" or "somebody else". Altruism in biological observations in field populations of the day organisms is an individual performing an action which is at a cost to themselves (e.g., pleasure and quality of life, time, probability of survival or reproduction), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Principal–agent Problem
The principal–agent problem refers to the conflict in interests and priorities that arises when one person or entity (the "agent") takes actions on behalf of another person or entity (the " principal"). The problem worsens when there is a greater discrepancy of interests and information between the principal and agent, as well as when the principal lacks the means to punish the agent. The deviation from the principal's interest by the agent is called " agency costs".''Pay Without Performance'', Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried, Harvard University Press 2004preface and introduction Common examples of this relationship include corporate management (agent) and shareholders (principal), elected officials (agent) and citizens (principal), or brokers (agent) and markets (buyers and sellers, principals). In all these cases, the principal has to be concerned with whether the agent is acting in the best interest of the principal. The concepts of moral hazard and conflict of interest re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extensive-form Game
An extensive-form game is a specification of a game in game theory, allowing (as the name suggests) for the explicit representation of a number of key aspects, like the sequencing of players' possible moves, their choices at every decision point, the (possibly imperfect) information each player has about the other player's moves when they make a decision, and their payoffs for all possible game outcomes. Extensive-form games also allow for the representation of incomplete information in the form of chance events modeled as " moves by nature". Finite extensive-form games Some authors, particularly in introductory textbooks, initially define the extensive-form game as being just a game tree with payoffs (no imperfect or incomplete information), and add the other elements in subsequent chapters as refinements. Whereas the rest of this article follows this gentle approach with motivating examples, we present upfront the finite extensive-form games as (ultimately) constructed here. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convex Combination
In convex geometry and vector algebra, a convex combination is a linear combination of points (which can be vectors, scalars, or more generally points in an affine space) where all coefficients are non-negative and sum to 1. In other words, the operation is equivalent to a standard weighted average, but whose weights are expressed as a percent of the total weight, instead of as a fraction of the ''count'' of the weights as in a standard weighted average. More formally, given a finite number of points x_1, x_2, \dots, x_n in a real vector space, a convex combination of these points is a point of the form :\alpha_1x_1+\alpha_2x_2+\cdots+\alpha_nx_n where the real numbers \alpha_i satisfy \alpha_i\ge 0 and \alpha_1+\alpha_2+\cdots+\alpha_n=1. As a particular example, every convex combination of two points lies on the line segment between the points. A set is convex if it contains all convex combinations of its points. The convex hull of a given set of points is identical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matthew Rabin
Matthew Joel Rabin (born December 27, 1963) is the Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Harvard Economics Department and Harvard Business School. Rabin's research focuses primarily on incorporating psychologically more realistic assumptions into empirically applicable formal economic theory. His topics of interest include errors in statistical reasoning and the evolution of beliefs, effects of choice context on exhibited preferences, reference-dependent preferences, and errors people make in inference in market and learning settings. Background Rabin was the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley Economics Department for 25 years before moving to Harvard. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1984 and PhD in Economics from MIT in 1989. Before entering MIT, he was a research student at the London School of Economics. He is a member of the R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Charness
Gary Charness (born February 3, 1950) is Professor of Economics and the Director of the Experimental and Behavioral Economics Laboratory in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Charness is an economist and social scientist, specializing in experimental and behavioral work; he is currently ranked 3rd in the world by RePEc in the field of experimental economics and has published nearly 80 academic articles. Charness is a contributor to several areas of economic research, including social preferences, identity and group membership, communication and beliefs, behavioral interventions, group decision-making, social networks, gender, and individual decision-making. A centerpiece of his research has been to effect beneficial social outcomes in difficult economic environments. Charness's work has been discussed and published in The New York Times and Science, as well as in other media. Charness is married and has three children. Biography Ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utility
As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The term has been adapted and reapplied within neoclassical economics, which dominates modern economic theory, as a utility function that represents a single consumer's preference ordering over a choice set but is not comparable across consumers. This concept of utility is personal and based on choice rather than on pleasure received, and so is specified more rigorously than the original concept but makes it less useful (and controversial) for ethical decisions. Utility function Consider a set of alternatives among which a person can make a preference ordering. The utility obtained from these alternatives is an unknown function of the utilities obtained from each alternative, not the sum of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
