Research

Although the theory of continuous time games is an abstraction of real-world interactions, we can create an environment in the lab that is strategically isomorphic to the theory. Human behavior converges to theoretical equilibrium predictions as the payoff effects of reaction delays shrink. 

Convex Time Budgets are a tool that is often used to estimate time preferences. We propose and estimate a series of consistency checks on an existing data set, finding a surprisingly large number of violations of standard measures of rationality.

Often, theoretical predictions of the relationship between equilibrium behavior and uncertainty preferences are indeterminate. I find experimental evidence supporting an  intuitive hypothesis: people who are more uncertainty averse play 'safer' strategies.

In principle, when playing a game, an ambiguity averse agent can use mixed strategies to build a hedge against strategic uncertainty. This paper documents the relationship between the strength of an agent's preference for building such hedges and the set of strategies that are rationalizable. 

Should speed cameras be hidden or placed in plain view? Our simple model and experiment suggests that placing them in plain view is best when the quantity of speed enforcement is optimally chosen (of course, the quantity of enforcement is often far from optimal).

We construct and estimate a structural model that attributes failures of contingent reasoning to either the complexity of contingent thinking or a lack of awareness of the need to think contingently. Many of our subjects are actually good at contingent thinking! For those who are not, both unawareness and complexity concerns are present.

We design a game where most players have inconsistent first- and higher-order beliefs. That is, what players believe about opponent A differs from what players believe opponent B believes about opponent A. This inconsistency in beliefs causes behavior to deviate from equilibrium play.

We construct a simple environment where subjects are surprisingly good Bayesian updaters. Our subjects are able to provide unbiased guesses of an unknown number even when they only observe biased signals. Subjects also display reasonably good meta-cognition, by responding rationally when we manipulate the price of signals.

We test a set of models that predict differing relationships between the timing of the resolution of uncertainty and preference for randomization. All of the models perform poorly!

Are you aware that multibets (also known as parlays or accumulators) have a much larger expected loss than standard bets? Don't worry, most people aren't. This fact also explains why sports betting companies advertise multibets so heavily: they generate much higher profits.  This paper puts forward a proposal that would (a) make multibet prices transparent, and (b) reduce multibet profits. 

This paper has evolved into the paper "Higher-order Beliefs in a Sequential Social Dilemma" above. The experiments and data in this paper are distinct from those in the SSD paper, with only limited overlap in the treatments across the two papers. Thus, this paper, although raw in places, may still be of interest to some.

This paper is a precursor to the paper "Mixed Strategies and Preferences for Randomization in Games with Ambiguity Averse Agents" above. The essential difference is that this paper uses equilibrium as the solution concept, and the other paper uses rationalizability instead. It turns out that rationalizability is much easier to work with in this environment, which means that the results established here are less interesting (and the exposition less refined) than those in the other paper.

We estimate the effects of introducing an emissions offsets scheme (i.e. where producers are paid to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions) in the Australian agriculture industries. We find that an emissions offsets scheme has the potential to induce substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the long run (8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum by 2030). We also find, however, that the implicit subsidy for (what are currently) highly emissions intensive industries induces a substitution effect away from low emissions intensity grains production into high emissions intensity beef and sheep meat production.