We observe that the imitation dynamics of Cubitt and Sugden (CS) is the same as the Replicator Dynamics for a certain class of games. Known results for such games then permit a more complete analysis of the CS imitation process, containing their results as special cases, and extending them considerably. We also offer a comment on the special role of “pure” prospects, and an as if interpretation...

Infinite hierarchies of awareness and beliefs arise in games with unawareness, similarly to belief hierarchies in standard games. A natural question is whether each hierarchy describes the player’s awareness of the hierarchies of other players and beliefs over these, or whether the reasoning can continue indefinitely. This paper constructs the universal type structure with unawareness where eac...

When scientists choose research projects with the highest expected value an externality can appear; slight variations on existing work will be selected in preference to new lines of research that would ultimately generate more value. New research enjoys two advantages: it is riskier and hence more likely to lead to high-value spin-o¤ projects and it can generate more spin-o¤ projects. Less comm...

The main result of Morris and Shin (2002)–restated in papers by Amato, Morris, and Shin (2002) and Amato and Shin (2003) and commented upon by the Economist (2004)–has been presented and interpreted as an anti-transparency result: more public information can be bad. However, some scrutiny of the result shows that it is actually pro transparency: except in very special circumstances, more public...

We model the idea that when consumers search for products, they first visit the firms which advertise more, or the firms whose advertising is more salient. Equilibrium prices and advertising efforts are increasing in consumer search costs. By contrast, equilibrium profits are nonmonotonic in search costs so firms are not necessarily better off if search costs rise. In our model, firms are engag...

Chicken or Checkin’? Rational Learning in Repeated Chess Games We examine rational learning among expert chess players and how they update their beliefs in repeated games with the same opponent. We present a model that explains how equilibrium play is affected when players change their choice of strategy when receiving additional information from each encounter. We employ a large international ...

This paper offers a model of optimism, pessimism, and cognitive dissonance. Beliefs—and consequently choices—depend not only on relevant information, but also on what makes the decision maker better-off. In an associated experiment, subjects who stood to gain from an increase in the price of a financial asset predicted higher prices than subjects who stood to gain from a decrease in price. Cons...

In this paper we examine individuals’ attitudes towards the timing of information. We test a theoretical prediction that people prefer to get information “clumped together” rather than piecewise. We conduct a controlled lab experiment where subjects participate in a lottery and can choose between different resolutions of uncertainty (clumped or piecewise). In two treatments we analyze which kin...

The theory of linguistic relativity—the idea that our language influences our thinking— has a long history in the humanities. Speakers of different languages may systematically think and behave differently. This phenomenon has only recently attracted attention from economists. This paper provides the first comprehensive review of this nascent literature. First we explain the linguistic relativi...

We study sequential decision problems where the decision maker does not observe the states of nature, but rather receives a noisy signal, whose distribution depends on the current state and on the action that she plays. We do not assume that the decision maker considers the worst-case scenario, but rather has a response correspondence, which maps distributions over signals to subjective best re...