0000000000170296
AUTHOR
Enrique Fatas
showing 23 related works from this author
Inducing efficient conditional cooperation patterns in public goods games, an experimental investigation
2010
This study analyses the behavior in a repeated public goods game when subjects know about the possibility of existence of strict conditional cooperators. We employed a baseline treatment and a threat treatment in which subjects are informed about the possibility of being in a group together with automata playing a grim trigger strategy. We conjecture the resulting game allows for almost fully efficient outcomes. Contributions in the threat treatment increase by 40% before a surprise restart, and by 50% after the surprise restart. In line with the grim trigger strategy subjects contribute either all or nothing in the threat treatment.
Are Low Prices Compromises Collusion Guarantees? An Experimental Analysis of Price Matching Policies
2001
In this paper we experimentally test the ability of Price-Matching Guarantees (PMG) to rise prices above the competitive level. We implement three different treatments of symmetric duopolies to check the effect of PMG both as a market institution and as a business strategy. In the absence of any low-price guarantee, prices get close to the Bertrand-Nash equilibrium although in the 50 rounds of the experiment no full convergence is obtained. The existence of PMG as an institution in a market where firms decide only about prices results in a clear collusive outcome as all markets quickly and fully converge to the collusive prediction. If we allow subjects to decide whether they adopt price ma…
Asset Markets and Equilibrium Selection in Public Goods Games with Provision Points: An Experimental Study
2001
This paper reports the experimental results of implicit pre-play communication on the equilibrium selection in threshold public goods game experiments. The existence of an asset market in which the right to participate in a public goods game with a provision point is auctioned off among a larger group in a first stage is found to enhance significantly the contribution to the provision of the public good in a subsequent second stage. Though, contributions declined on average in the repeated public goods game when subjects were endowed with the right to play, they increased when subjects purchased the right to play. Once reached the Pareto-dominant equilibrium in the second stage, the auction…
AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST ON RETIREMENT DECISIONS
2007
I. INTRODUCTION The reform of social security systems is now one of the main issues on the economic policy agenda of most industrialized countries. It is widely considered that, unless serious changes take place, the aging of the population implying a rise in the number of retirees relative to that of workers will threaten the viability, of pay-as-you-go public pension systems in the long run. This threat is being reinforced by the progressive reduction in the retirement age of the working population. The central reforms that are being proposed to neutralize these future financing problems are the raising of the contribution rate, the decreasing of pension benefits, or/and the delay of the …
The UN in the Lab
2013
We consider two alternatives to inaction for governments combating terrorism, which we term Deterrence and Prevention. Deterrence – investing in resources that reduce the impact of an attack – generates a negative externality to other governments, making their countries a more attractive objective for terrorists, while Prevention – investing in resources that reduce the ability of the terrorist organization to mount an attack – creates a positive externality by reducing the overall threat of terrorism for all. Due to the structure of this interaction, countries can benefit from coordination of policy choices, and international institutions (such as the UN) can be utilized to facilitate coor…
Vertical Separation v. Independent Downstream Entry in the Spanish Electricity Network: An Experimental Approach
2007
We present experimental results from a series of sessions organized using the Power Market simulator; a software designed to realistically replicate the Spanish Electricity Market. In the experiments reported here we compare the status quo to two alternative treatments which represent alternative market structures. In one of them, labeled as vertical separation, we assume that power generating firms and electricity distributors-endsuppliers belong to separate business groups. In the second, we study the effect of entry by independent end-suppliers. Both alternative scenarios dominate the status quo in terms of market efficiency, whereas the latter of them dominates the former.
Carry a big stick, or no stick at all
2016
We investigate the effect of costly punishment in a trust game with endowment heterogeneity. Our findings indicate that the difference between the investor and the allocator’s initial endowments determines the effect of punishment on trust and trustworthiness. Punishment fosters trust only when the investor is wealthier than the allocator. Otherwise, punishment fails to promote trusting behavior. As for trustworthiness, the effect is just the opposite. The higher the difference between the investor and the allocator’s initial endowments, the less willing allocators are to pay back. We discuss the consistency of our findings with social preference models (like inequality aversion, reciprocit…
ASSET MARKETS AND EQUILIBRIUM SELECTION IN PUBLIC GOODS GAMES WITH PROVISION POINTS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
2001
We report experimental results on the effects that auctioning the right to play a public goods game with a provision point may have on equilibrium selection and individual behavior. Auctioning off such a right among a larger population of players strikingly enhances public good provision. Once public good provision is obtained, the auction price at the preliminary stage increases to its upper limit, dissipating all players’ gains associated with the provision of the public good. Individual deviations from the equilibrium strategy are neither able to force lower market prices nor to affect provision of the public good in subsequent periods. (JEL C72, C92, H41) I. INTRODUCTION Public good pro…
An experimental analysis of team production in networks
2010
Experimental and empirical evidence highlights the role of networks on social outcomes. In this paper we test the properties of exogenously fixed networks in team production. Subjects make the same decisions in a team-work environment under four different organizational networks: The line, the circle, the star, and the complete network. In all the networks, links make information available to neighbors. This design allows us to analyze decisions across networks and a variety of subjects’ types in a standard linear team production game. Contribution levels differ significantly across networks and the star is the most efficient incomplete one. Moreover, our results suggest that subjects act a…
Not all group members are created equal: heterogeneous abilities in inter-group contests
2020
AbstractCompetition between groups is ubiquitous in social and economic life, and typically occurs between groups that are not created equal. Here we experimentally investigate the implications of this general observation on the unfolding of symmetric and asymmetric competition between groups that are either homogeneous or heterogeneous in the ability of their members to contribute to the success of the group. Our main finding is that relative to the benchmark case in which two homogeneous compete against each other, heterogeneity within groups per se has no discernable effect on competition, while introducing heterogeneity between groups leads to a significant intensification of conflict a…
A Self-Funding Reward Mechanism for Tax Compliance
2015
We compare in a laboratory experiment two audit-based tax compliance mechanisms that collect fines from those found non-compliant. The mechanisms differ in the way fines are redistributed to individuals who were either not audited or audited and found to be compliant. The first, as is the case in most extant tax systems, does not discriminate between the un-audited and those found compliant. The second targets the redistribution in favor of those found compliant. We find that targeting increases compliance when paying taxes generates a social return. We do not find any increase in compliance in a control treatment where individuals audited and found compliant receive symbolic rewards. It is…
Wage Bargaining Centralization And Macroeconomic Performance: An Experimental Approach
2001
This paper experimentally analyzes the effect of wage bargaining centralization (WBC) on macroeconomic performance. Our theoretical benchmark comes from that developed by Cukierman and Lippi (1999) to investigate the joint effects of monetary policy and labor market institutions on unemployment and inflation. We focus on the implications of two well known effects related to the degree of WBC: the competitive effect and the strategic effect. To do so we established a simple wage setting mechanism based on the existence of assorted levels of WBC measured by the number of unions in the labor market. In the three control treatments, unions' welfare and monetary rewards depend only on unemployme…
Cooperation and Status in Organizations
2010
We report the results of experiments designed to test the effect of social status on contributions to a public good, with and without punishment. The experiments are conducted in four-person groups in a “star” network, where one central player observes and is observed by the others. This imposes a social structure on the game, and gives the central player a leadership role in the group, simply by virtue of being commonly observed. We further manipulate status by allocating the central position to the person who earns the highest, or the lowest, score on a trivia quiz. These high-status and low-status treatments are compared, and we find that the effect of organizational structure—the existe…
Design of an ICT Tool for Decision Making in Social and Health Policies
2015
The governance requires technical support regarding the complexity in deciding health policies to assist people who require long-term care. Long-term care policies require the use of ICT simulation tools that can provide policy makers with the option of going into a decision theatre and virtually knowing the consequences of different policies prior to finally determining the real policy to be adopted. In this sense, there is an absence of simulation tools for decision making about long-term care policies. In this chapter, the authors propose the foundations and guidelines of SSIMSOWELL, a new scalable, multiagent simulation tool that increases the prediction capacity of governance in the lo…
Reciprocity, matching and conditional cooperation in two public goods games
2005
Previous experimental and empirical evidence has identified social preferences in the voluntary provision of public goods. A number of competing models of such preferences have been proposed. We provide evidence for one model of behavior in these games, reciprocity (or matching, or conditional cooperation). Consistent with previous research, we find that participants in the voluntary contribution mechanism attempt to match the contributions of others in their group. We also examine participants in a related game with different equilibria, the weakest-link mechanism. Here, in contrast, participants contribute so as to match the minimum contribution of others in their group.
Experimental duopolies under price guarantees
2011
In a symmetric differentiated experimental duopoly we test the ability of Price Guarantees (PGs) to raise prices above the competitive levels. Different types of PGs ("aggressive" and "soft" price-beating and price-matching) are implemented either as an exogenously imposed market rule or as a business strategy. Our results show that PGs may lead close to the collusive outcome, depending on whether the interaction between duopolists is repeated and provided that the guarantee is not of the "aggressive" price-beating type.
WITHIN-TEAM COMPETITION IN THE MINIMUM EFFORT COORDINATION GAME
2006
. We report the results of an experiment on a continuous version of the minimum effort coordination game. The introduction of within-team competition significantly increases effort levels relative to a baseline with no competition and increases coordination relative to a secure treatment where the pay-off-dominant equilibrium strategy weakly dominates all other actions. Nonetheless, within-team competition does not prevent subjects from polarizing both in the efficient and the inefficient equilibria.
Mixture and Distribution of Different Water Qualities: An Experiment on Alternative Scenarios Concerning Vertical Structure in a Complex Market
2001
We set up a model of water management, which is inspired by the possibility of mixing water of different qualities. Water is supplied to two types of consumers with different preferences for water quality and quantity. A distributional knot may exist which optimally distributes the supplied water in the downstream market. Different scenarios compare experimentally the advantages of a centralized versus a decentralized resource management. We conducted experiments with 14 markets in three different settings, labelled as "upstream monopoly", "upstream duopoly" and "duopoly-monopsony". We find that a two-product monopoly performs better than the duopoly regarding social welfare and volatility …
Blind justice: An experimental analysis of random punishment in team production
2010
We study the effect of blind punishment in a team production experiment, in which subjects choose non-observable effort levels. In this setting, a random exclusion mechanism is introduced, linked to the normalized group performance (R, from 0 to 1). Every round, each subject is non-excluded from the collective profit with probability R (and with probability 1 ! R gets no benefit from the group account). Punishment does not depend on the individual behavior, but the probability of being punished reflects collective performance. As the exclusion probability is computed at the group level, no individual information is needed to implement exclusion. However, the probabilistic punishment risks t…
Co-Operation On R&D As An Innovation Strategy: Evidence From
 Valencian Firms
2001
Using survey data on Valencian manufacturing firms we analyse the factors influencing the probability of a firm to co-operate on R&D with different types of partners. We find that Research Institutions play a key role as a source of information for the decision to co-operate with any type of partner, and in particular to co-operate either with suppliers or customers (vertical cooperation). The availability of public funds and incoming spillovers increase the probability of the firm to co-operate on R&D whereas the orientation of the innovating activities towards basic R&D decreases this probability. Concentrating on co-operative firms on R&D, we further explore the determinants of co-operat…
Global social identity and global cooperation
2011
This research examined the question of whether the psychology of social identity can motivate cooperation in the context of a global collective. Our data came from a multinational study of choice behavior in a multilevel public-goods dilemma conducted among samples drawn from the general populations of the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina, South Africa, and Iran. Results demonstrate that an inclusive social identification with the world community is a meaningful psychological construct that plays a role in motivating cooperation that transcends parochial interests. Self-reported identification with the world as a whole predicts behavioral contributions to a global public good beyond …
Carry a big stick, or no stick at all: Punishment and endowment heterogeneity in the trust game
2016
AbstractWe investigate the effect of costly punishment in a trust game with endowment heterogeneity. Our findings indicate that the difference between the investor and the allocator’s initial endowments determines the effect of punishment on trust and trustworthiness. Punishment fosters trust only when the investor is wealthier than the allocator. Otherwise, punishment fails to promote trusting behavior. As for trustworthiness, the effect is just the opposite. The higher the difference between the investor and the allocator’s initial endowments, the less willing allocators are to pay back. We discuss the consistency of our findings with social preference models (like inequality aversion, re…
Supplementary Information Files for Not all group members are created equal: heterogeneous abilities in inter-group contests
2021
Supplementary Information Files for Not all group members are created equal: heterogeneous abilities in inter-group contestsCompetition between groups is ubiquitous in social and economic life, and typically occurs between groups that are not created equal. Here we experimentally investigate the implications of this general observation on the unfolding of symmetric and asymmetric competition between groups that are either homogeneous or heterogeneous in the ability of their members to contribute to the success of the group. Our main finding is that relative to the benchmark case in which two homogeneous compete against each other, heterogeneity within groups per se has no discernable effect…