Economics Seminar | Public Statistics as a Policy Tool: A Study of the Centipede Game with Aggregate Information
| Event | Public Statistics as a Policy Tool: A Study of the Centipede Game with Aggregate Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | Dr Zacharias Maniadis Associate Professor in Economics, University of Southampton, UK |
| Chairperson | Professor Ng Yew Kwang Economics School of Social Sciences |
| Date | 26 January 2018, Friday |
| Venue | HSS Meeting Room 6 (HSS-04-95) |
| Time | 11:00am to 12:00pm |
All are welcome to attend the seminar.
Abstract
We raise a novel question to inform our long-standing research agenda that studies public information as a policy tool: can information about the social interactions of others change even equilibrium behaviour, where beliefs are typically assumed to be correct? We examine this question focusing on the well-known ‘centipede game’: a multistage trust interaction, where it is socially beneficial to reach later stages. We develop a simple learning-motivated equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents. We first extend a model of learning in Bayesian games (Dekel, Fudenberg and Levin, 2004) to incorporate aggregate information and apply it to the centipede game. Our model combines self-confirming equilibrium and social preferences. Unlike standard models, our model predicts that aggregate feedback has clear long-run effects. We also provide tentative experimental evidence on different forms of feedback in the centipede game, finding weak effects of aggregate feedback.
Biography
Dr Zacharias Maniadis is an Associate Professor in Economics (with tenure) at the University of Southampton, UK. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Athens, Greece, and his Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA, USA. He was a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Cournot Center of Economics Research. Dr Zacharias’ work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal: Micro and Plos Biology. He has served as guest editor for the Economic Journal and is serving as an external examiner for the London School of Economics. His main research fields are Behavioural Economics, Applied Game Theory and Political Economy. He is especially interested in understanding the institutional underpinnings of scientific knowledge production and differences across disciplines. His other major area of interest concerns the examination of the robustness of democratic institutions to manipulation by special interests.