Suchergebnisse

Van de Kragt, Orbell, and Dawes (1983) reported the results of a series of experiments in which n subjects each receive a monetary endowment and then may choose privately whether to contribute it to a monetary public good; the good is supplied if a prespecified numberm < nof contributions or more is made. Decision policies maximizing expected value are derived for this experimental paradigm under three different assumptions about the expectations each individual has about the decisions of the othern– I members: A homogeneity assumption postulating that each other member contributes with fixed probability p, a heterogeneity assumption postulating that then– I p's are independently selected from a subjective probability distribution, and a partial homogeneity assumption postulating that then– I members are partitioned into distinct subsets with the same p for all members of each subset. The theoretical and social implications of these assumptions are briefly discussed.

Thirteen college students participated individually in a multistage decision making task. The task consisted of eight different computer-controlled problems. The duration of each problem was not known to the decision maker. A dynamic programming model employing Bayesian notions was constructed for the adaptive decision making task, tested and confirmed. An alternative explanation is discussed briefly.

A Range Betting Method (RBM) for measuring continuous subjective probability distributions (SPD) is tested in a computer-controlled sequential decision task. The decision makers are asked occasionally to place a wager upon the range of an unknown value of P, 0 ≤ P ≤ 1, generated by a computer. In addition, the decision makers predict the exact value of P, and then estimate the value of P after obtaining partial information about its value. The decision makers' estimates of the range boundaries are compared both to predicted values by the RBM and to predicted values by a confidence limits' model. In both comparisons the results indicate a regression effect and a block-to-block tracking behavior. Attempts to compare two independent measures of the same SPD are unsuccessful.

Volunteer's dilemmas that evolve over time are presented and modeled as noncooperative n-person games in extensive form with symmetric players, discrete time, finite horizon, and complete information. Volunteering is costly, thereby giving rise to free riding. Reflecting on the observation that in many naturally occurring social dilemmas it is beneficial to volunteer earlier than later, the model assumes that the payoff to the volunteer and the (higher) payoff to each of the nonvolunteers decrease monotonically over time. The authors construct symmetric and asymmetric subgame perfect equilibria to the game. An experimental study shows that financially motivated subjects who are rewarded contingent on their performance volunteer more readily when the cost of volunteering is relatively low; that they largely fail to coordinate on any of the asymmetric equilibria in which only a single subject volunteers immediately; that they volunteer, on average, earlier than predicted; and that they vary considerably from one another in their inclination to free ride.