Seminar Behavioural Economics im WS 2010/11

Topic

This is a seminar on Behavioural Economics. Behavioural Economics extends the model of the homo oeconomicus using social, cognitive and emotional aspects to better understand economic behaviour and the implications of this behaviour in economic contexts.

To avoid misunderstandings: This is neither a seminar on Behavioural Business Administration nor one on Behavioural Marketing. The focus of this seminar is on behaviour in an economic context. You find a list of potential topics below. To learn more about the content of the seminar, please have a look at the literature.

Language

The seminar will be in English.

Teaching and Organisation

Kirsten Häger

Schedule

Until 31.7.

Application. For students with target degree »Bachelor« places for seminars during the winter term are planned centrally. Students with target degrees »Master« send their application to Kirsten Häger.

Mon 28 June 2010, 18:15, Carl-Zeiss-Str. 3, SR130

Introduction. In the introduction you will learn more about the topics of the seminar. After the introduction, please send an a e-mail to kirsten.haegeruni-jena.de with your prefence for three topics (see below: most preferred topic, second preferred topic, third preferred topic). We will allocate participants to topics according to their preference.

Sun 28 November 2010

Hand in your essay (as a PDF, about 2000 words).

Mon 3 January 2011

Hand in your written report for the essay you discuss (as a PDF, not more than 1000 words)

Tue 18 January 2011, 9:00-18:00, August Bebel Str. 4, , Seminar room E013a,
Thu 20 January 2011, 9:00-18:00, August Bebel Str. 4, , Seminar room E013b,
Fr 21 January 2011, 9:00-18:00, August Bebel Str. 4, , Seminar room E013b:

Presentation of your topics (30 minutes) and discussion (10 minutes), general discussion

Requirements for Bachelor Students:

The lectures Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung and BW 24.2 are helpful but not necessary.

Requirements for Master's Students:

The lectures MW 26.1 - Approaches to economic science and MW24.2 - Quantitative Economics are helpful but not necessary.

Requirements for all students:

• Write an essay on your topic.
• Present this essay.
• Discuss another essay and presentation in class and prepare a written report for this essay.
• Participate actively in all seminar sessions.

Topics:

1. Ultimatum und dictator game
2. Trust game
3. Public good game
4. Fairness
5. Altruism
6. Reciprocity and punishment
7. Neuronomics
8. Experiments with children
9. Cross-cultural experiments
10. Field experiments
11. Allais paradox and prospect theory
12. Auctions
13. Asset markets
14. Bribery Game
15. Labor market experiments

Credit

The seminar can be credited as “Seminar AVWL” and “Seminar Wirtschaftstheorie” for a Diplom, it can further be credited as a “Seminar” in the Bachelor and the Master.

Advice

Here are some remarks that might help you in the preparation of your essay and your presentation.

Literature (general)

• Charles A. Holt; Markets, Games & Strategic Behavior; Pearson, 2007.
• J. H. Kagel and A. E. Roth; The Handbook of Experimental Economics; Princeton University Press, 1995.
• Daniel Friedman, Shyam Sunder; Experimental Methods: A Primer for Economists; Cambridge Univ Press, 1994
• Douglas D. Davis and Charles A. Holt; Experimental Economics; Princeton University Press, 1993.

Literature (as a starting point for each topic):

Ultimatum und Dictator Game

• Roth, Alvin E. (1995), “Bargaining Experiments”, in: The Handbook of Experimental Economics, John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth (eds.), Princeton University Press.
• Holt, Charles A. (2007), Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior, chapter 12, Addison Wesley.
• Güth, Werner, R. Schmittberger, and B. Schwarz (1982), “An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 3, pp. 367-388.

Trust Game

• Berg, Joyce, John Dickhaut, and Kevin McCabe (1995), ”Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History”, Games and Economic Behavior, 10, pp. 122-142.
• Glaeser, Edward L., David Laibson, Jose Scheinkman, and Christine L. Soutter (2000), ”Measuring Trust”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115, 3, pp. 811-846.
• Holt, Charles A. (2007), Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior, chapter 13, Addison Wesley.
• Burks, Stephen V., Jeffrey P. Carpenter, and Eric Verhoogen (2003), ”Playing both roles in the trust game”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 51, 2, pp. 195-216.

Public Good Game

• Ledyard, John O. (1995), “Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research”, in: The Handbook of Experimental Economics, John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth (eds.), Princeton University Press.
• Holt, Charles A. (2007), Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior, chapter 14, Addison Wesley.
• Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter (2000), ”Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments”, American Economic Review, 90, pp. 980-994.

Fairness

• Bolton, Gary E. and Axel Ockenfels (2000), ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition”, American Economic Review, 90, 1, pp. 166- 193.
• Fehr, Ernst and Klaus Schmidt (1999), ”A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 817-868.
• Rabin, Matthew (1993), “Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics”, American Economic Review, 83, pp. 1281-1302.
• Falk, Arnim, Ernst Fehr, and Urs Fischbacher (2003), “On the Nature of Fair Behavior”, Economic Inquiry, 41, pp. 20-26.

Altruism

• Fehr, Ernst and Urs Fischbacher (2003), ”The nature of human altruism”, Nature, 425, pp. 785-791.
• Fehr, Ernst, and Bettina Rockenbach (2004), “Human altruism: economic, neural, and evolutionary prespectives”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, pp. 784-790.
• Eckel, Catherine C., and Philipp J. Grossman (1996), ”Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games”, Games and Economic Behavior, 16, 2, pp. 181- 191.
• Andreoni, James, and John Miller (2002), ”Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism”, Econometrica, 70, 2, pp.737-753.

Reciprocity and punishment

• Fehr, Ernst and Urs Fischbacher (2004), “Third-party punishment and social norms”, Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, pp. 63-87.
• Abbink, Klaus, Abdolkarim Sadrieh, and Shmuel Zamir (2004), “Fairness, Public Good, and Emotional Aspects of Punishment Behavior”, Theory and Decision, 57, 1, pp. 25-57.
• Fehr, Ernst and Simon Gächter (2002), “Altruistic punishment in humans”, Nature, 415, pp. 137-140.
• Fehr, Ernst, Urs Fischbacher, and Simon Gächter (2002), ”Strong Reciprocity, Human Cooperation and the Enforcement of Social Norms”, Human Nature, 13, pp. 1-25.
• Sethi, R. and Somanathan E. (2003), ”Understanding reciprocity”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 50, pp. 2-27.

Neuronomics

• Camerer, Colin, George Loewenstein, and Drazen Prelec (2005), ”Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics”, Journal of Economic Literature, 43, pp. 9-64.
• Camerer, Colin (2007), ”Neuroeconomics: Using Neuroscience to Make Economic Predictions”, The Economic Journal, 117, pp. C26-C42.
• De Quervain, Dominique J.-F., Urs Fischbacher, Valerie Treyer, Melanie Schellhammer, Ulrich Schnyder, Alfred Buck, and Ernst Fehr (2004), ”The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment”, Science, 305, pp. 1254-1258.

Experiments with children

• Krause, Kate. and William T. Harbaugh (1998), ”Economic experiments that you can perform at home on your children”, Working paper, University of Oregon.
• Murnighan, J. Keith, and Michael Scott Saxon (1998), ”Ultimatum Bargaining by children and adults”, Journal of Economic Psycholgy, 19, pp. 415-445.
• Sutter, Matthias, and Martin Kocher (2007), ”Trust and trustworthiness across different age groups”, Games and Economic Behavior, 59, pp. 364-382.

Cross-cultural experiments

• Henrich, Joseph, Richard Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Ernst Fehr, Colin Camerer, Richard McElreath, Michael Gurven, Kim Hill, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, David Tracer, Frank Marlowe, John Patton, Michael Alvard, Francisco Gil-White, and Natalie Henrich (2005): " 'Economic Man' in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Ethnography and Experiments from 15 small-scale societies", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, pp. 795-855.
• Henrich, Joseph, Richard McElreath, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, Clark Barrett, Alexander Bolyanatz, Juan Camilo Cardenas, Michael Gurven, Edwins Gwako, Natalie Henrich, Carolyn Lesorogol, Frank Marlowe, David Tracer, and John Ziker (2006), “Costly Punishment Across Human Societies”, Science, 312, pp. 1767-1770.
• Bohnet, Iris, Fiona Greig, Benedikt Herrmann, and Richard Zeckhauser (2008): “Betrayal aversion: Evidence from Brazil, China, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States”, American Economic Review, 98, 1, pp. 294-310.
• Gächter, Simon, Benedikt Herrmann, and Christian Thöni (2008): “Antisocial Punishment Across Societies”, Science, 319, pp. 1362-1367.
Feldexperimente
• List, John (2004): “Field experiments”, Journal of Economic Literature, 42, 4, pp. 1009-1055.
• Gneezy, Uri, and Aldo Rustichini (2000): “A Fine is a Price”, Journal of Legal Studies, 29, 1, 1, pp. 1-18.
• Falk, Armin (2007): “Gift-Exchange in the Field”, Econometrica, 75, 5, pp. 1501-1511.
Allais Paradox and Prospect Theory
• Camerer, Colin (1995), “Individual Decision Making”, in: The Handbook of Experimental Economics, John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth (eds.), Princeton University Press.
• Holt, Charles A. (2007), Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior, chapter 28, Addison Wesley.
• Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky (1979). “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk”, Econometrica, 47, pp. 263-291.
Auctions
• Kagel, John H. (1995), “Auctions: A Survey of Experimental Research”, in: The Handbook of Experimental Economics, John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth (eds.), Princeton University Press.
• Holt, Charles A. (2007), Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior, chapters 19, 21, and 22, Addison Wesley.
• Coppinger, Vicki M., Vernon L. Smith, and Jon A. Titus (1980), ”Incentives and Behavior in English, Dutch and Sealed-bid Auctions”, Economic Inquiry, 18, 1, pp. 1-22.
Asset markets
• Sunder, Shyam (1995), “Experimental Asset Markets: A Survey”, in: The Handbook of Experimental Economics”, John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth (eds.), Princeton University Press.
• Holt, Charles A. (2007), Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior, chapter 11, Addison Wesley.
• Noussair, Charles, and Steven Tucker (2006), ”Future Markets and Bubble Formation in Experimental Asset Markets”, Pacific Economic Review, 11, 2, pp. 167-184.
Bribery Game
• Abbink, Klaus, Bernd Irlenbusch, and Elke Renner (2002), An Experimental Bribary Game, The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 18, 2, pp. 428.454.
• Abbink, K. (2004) ”Staff rotation as an anti-corruption policy: an experimental study”, European Journal of Political Economy, 20, pp. 887- 906.
• Abbink, Klaus and Heike Hennig-Schmidt (2006), ”Neutral versus loaded instructions in a bribary experiment”, Experimental Economics, 9, 2, pp. 103- 121.
Labor market experiments
• Falk, Arnim, and Ernst Fehr (2003), “Why labor market experiments?”, Labour Economics, 10, pp. 399-406.
• Gächter, Simon and Fehr, Ernst (2002), “Fairness in the Labour Market? A Survey of Experimental Results”, Zurich IEER Working Paper No. 114, available at SSRN.
• Falk, Armin, and Michael Kosfeld (2006), “The Hidden Cost of Control”, American Economic Review, 96, 5, pp. 1611-1630.