Content
Description
People
Under the Spotlight
Selected Recent Publications
Recent Working Papers
Seminars
Workshops and Conferences
Classes Offered This Year
Experiments
Links
Description
The Brown Experiment and Economic Theory (BEET) group is a collection of researchers in the Economics Department at Brown University whose work focuses on understanding the foundations of economic decision making. Members of BEET study a wide range of topics, from the way people make choices individually, to the nature of human cooperation, the strategic interaction through networks of personal relationships, and the optimal design of institutions. These questions are tackled using a variety of theoretical and empirical tools: cutting edge modeling techniques from game theory and decision theory; data from laboratory and field experiments; and novel data sources, such as measures of brain activity while people complete economic tasks.
This website provides a gateway to the activities of the BEET group. Below you can find links to the home pages of the BEET researchers, recently published articles and working papers, and a guide to the various seminar series and conferences supported by the group.
People
 |
I work in the areas of game theory, experimental economics, and political economy. Recent work has examined the determinants of cooperation in repeated games and the effect of democracy and moral suasion on pro-social behavior. |
 |
I study cooperation from an economic perspective, with a special interest on bargaining, distributive justice, and the design of institutions that take individual incentives into account. |
 |
I use experimental techniques from economics and neuroscience to understand the foundations of economic behavior, particularly how people gather and use information to make choices. |
 |
|
 |
I study how social networks shape and are shaped by economic activity, with an emphasis on sustaining cooperation via repeated interactions in networks and the on role of social networks in determining market outcomes. |
 |
|
 |
I use decision-making experiments to study individual behavior and institutions in social dilemma and other settings with emphasis on incentives issues and distributional outcomes. |
 |
I am interested in search and matching and their role for marriage age. My experimental work explores the impact of an employee's beliefs on the work contract. |
 |
I am interested in all areas of economic theory. Recent topics of my research include risk, information, coalitional games and externalities, bounded rationality, networks and mechanism design. |
 |
|
Visitors in 2010-11:
Marilda Sotomayor (Fall)
Francoise Forges (Spring)
Philippe Mongin (Spring)
Brown researchers affiliated at other departments:
Michael Frank (Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences)
Amy Greenwald (Computer Science)
Steven Sloman (Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences)
Mascha van't Wout (Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences)
Under the Spotlight
This section features a non-technical description of one recent paper by a BEET member.
“Social Network and Unraveling in Labor Markets” by Itay Fainmesser (the paper is available here)
I study the phenomenon of early hiring in entry-level labor markets (e.g. the market for medical interns or the market for judicial clerks) in the presence of social networks that connect firms and the mentors of the workers when the workers are still in school. The timing of hiring raised interest in the economic literature after several labor markets have unraveled to very early dates of hiring. For example, law clerks were hired as early as their first semester in law school, and NBA players have been drafted right out of high school.
Many of these markets have some features in common. While in school, information on workers’ quality is revealed over time. Early in their training, workers’ quality is known to their mentors, who observe them daily. However, workers have not yet proven themselves in a way that can be observed by firms. If firms want to sign early contracts with workers, mentors face a dilemma: they want their mentees to get a good job, but also want to maintain their reputation for providing accurate recommendations. I consider a model in which firms and mentors that never mislead them are connected. After graduation, workers have already proven themselves enough for firms to know if they are good or not. I characterize the effects of changes to the network structure on the unraveling of the market towards early hiring. Moreover, I show that an efficient design of the matching procedure between firms and workers after graduation can prevent this process of unraveling.
This project highlights one aspect of the importance of social networks, but also opens some new questions. For example, in a follow-up paper, I study when can firms trust the recommendations of mentors?
Selected Recent Publications
Forthcoming:
Trust among the Avatars: A Virtual World Experiment, with and without Textual and Visual Cues (appendix), by Stephen Atlas and Louis Putterman, Southern Economic Journal.
A New Necessary Condition for Implementation in Iteratively Undominated
Strategies, by Takashi Kunimoto and Roberto Serrano, Journal of Economic Theory.
A Simple Model of Search Engine Pricing, by Kfir Eliaz and Ran Spiegler, Economic Journal.
Reason-Based Choice: A Bargaining Rationale for the Attraction and Compromise Effects, by Geoffroy de Clippel and Kfir Eliaz, Theoretical Economics.
Edgar Allan Poe's Riddle: Framing Effects in Repeated Matching Pennies Games, by Kfir Eliaz and Ariel Rubinstein, Games and Economic Behavior.
Workers, Warriors and Criminals: Social Conflict in General Equilibrium, by Ernesto Dal Bó and Pedro Dal Bó, Journal of the European Economic Association.
On Strategic Use of Attention Grabbers, by Kfir Eliaz and Ran Spiegler, Theoretical Economics.
Consideration Sets and Competitive Marketing, by Kfir Eliaz and Ran Spiegler, Review of Economic Studies.
Search and Satisficing, by Andrew Caplin, Mark Dean, and Daniel Martin, American Economic Review.
Search, Choice and Revealed Preference, by Andrew Caplin and Mark Dean, Theoretical Economics.
Lavish Returns on Cheap Talk: Non-binding Communication in a Trust Experiment, by Avner Ben-Ner, Louis Putterman, and Ting Ren, Journal of Socio-Economics.
Monitoring in Teams: A Model and Experiment on the Central Monitor Hypothesis, by Stefan Grosse, Louis Putterman, and Bettina Rockenbach, Journal of the European Economic Association.
2011:
The Evolution of Cooperation in Infinitely Repeated Games: Experimental Evidence, by Pedro Dal Bo and Guillaume Frechette, American Economic Review.
2010:
Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy, by Pedro Dal Bo, Andrew Foster, and Louis Putterman, American Economic Review.
Testing the Reward Prediction Error Model Class, by Robb B. Rutledge, Mark Dean, Andrew Caplin, and Paul W. Glimcher, Journal of Neuroscience.
Measuring Beliefs and Rewards: A Neuroeconomic Approach, by Andrew Caplin, Mark Dean, Paul Glimcher and Robb Rutledge, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Multiplicity of Mixed Equilibria in Mechanisms: a Unified Approach to Exact and Approximate Implementation, by Roberto Serrano and Rajiv Vohra, Journal of Mathematical Economics.
Cores of Combined Games, by Francis Bloch and Geoffroy de Clippel, Journal of Economic Theory.
A Difficulty in Implementing Correlated Equilibrium Distributions, by A. Kar, I. Ray and R. Serrano, Games and Economic Behavior.
2009:
Bargaining over Bets, by Kfir Eliaz and Ran Spiegler, Games and Economic Behavior.
A Consistent Weighted Ranking Scheme with an Application to NCAA College Football Rankings, by Itay Fainmesser, Chaim Fershtman and Neil Gandal, Journal of Sports Economics.
Who to Punish? Individual Decisions and Majority Rule in Mitigating the Free-Rider Problem, by Arhan Ertan , Talbot Page and Louis Putterman, European Economic Review.
Not Just Babble: Opening the Black Box of Communication in a Voluntary Contribution Experiment, by Olivier Bochet and Louis Putterman, European Economic Review.
Trust, Communication and Contracts: An Experiment, by Avner Ben-Ner and Louis Putterman, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
2008:
Consumer Optimism and Price Discrimination, by Kfir Eliaz and Ran Spiegler, Theoretical Economics.
Creating Competition Out of Thin Air: An Experimental Study of Right-to-Choose Auctions, by Kfir Eliaz, Theo Offerman and Andrew Schotter, Games and Economic Behavior.
Impartial Division of a Dollar, by Geoffroy de Clippel, Herve Moulin and Nicolaus Tideman, Journal of Economic Theory.
Marginal Contributions and Externalities in the Value, by Geoffroy de Clippel and Roberto Serrano, Econometrica.
An Economic Index of Riskiness, by Robert Aumann and Roberto Serrano, Journal of Political Economy.
Decentralized Trade, Random Utility and the Evolution of Social Welfare, by Michihiro Kandori, Roberto Serrano and Oscar Volij, Journal of Economic Theory.
Dopamine, Reward Prediction Error, and Economics, by Andrew Caplin and Mark Dean, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Recent Working Papers
Testing for Rationality with Consumption Data: Demographics and Heterogeneity, by Mark Dean and Daniel Martin
Contracts for Agents with Biased Beliefs: Some Theory and an Experiment, by Anja Sautmann
A Variation on Ellsberg, by Kfir Eliaz and Pietro Ortoleva.
On the Strategic Disclosure of Feasible Options in Bargaining, by Geoffroy de Clippel and Kfir Eliaz.
Self-Organization for Collective Action: An Experimental Study of Voting on Formal, Informal, and No Sanction Regimes, by Thomas Markussen, Louis Putterman and Jean-Robert Tyran. (appendix)
State or Nature? Formal vs. Informal Sanctioning in the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods, by Kenju Kamei, Louis Putterman and Jean-Robert Tyran. (appendix)
Bilateral and Community Enforcement in a Networked Market with Simple Strategies, by Itay Fainmesser and David A. Goldberg.
Age Matching Patterns and Search, by Anja Sautmann.
Entropy and the value of information for investors, by Antonio Cabrales, Olivier Gossner and Roberto Serrano.
Sending Information to Interactive Receivers Playing a Generalized Prisoners’ Dilemma, by Kfir Eliaz and Roberto Serrano.
Social Networks and Unraveling in Labor Markets, by Itay Fainmesser.
Community Structure and Market Outcomes: A Repeated Games in Networks Approach, by Itay Fainmesser.
Equality, Equity and Incentives: An Experiment, by Loukas Balafoutas, Martin G. Kocher, Louis Putterman and Matthias Sutter.
Ex-Post Regret Learning in Games with Fixed and Random Matching: The Case of Private Values, by Rene Saran and Roberto Serrano.
Regret Matching with Finite Memory, by Rene Saran and Roberto Serrano.
Evaluating the Conditions for Robust Mechanism Design, by Takashi Kunimoto and Roberto Serrano.
Click here for previous working papers that have not yet been published.
Seminars
Citibank Workshop in Economic Theory (meets on Mondays from 4 to 5:30pm).
Theory lunch (meets on Thursdays from noon to 1pm).
Distinguished Visitor Lecture Serie on Judgement Aggregation Theory and its Applications (Philippe Mongin), March 2011.
Workshops and Conferences
Forthcoming
Past
2004 North American Meeting of Econometric Society
First Spring Mini-Conference on Economic Theory (2008)
2008 NSF/NBER/CEME Conference on General Equilibrium
Second Spring Mini-Conference on Economic Theory (2010)
Third Spring Mini-Conference on Economic Theory (2011)
Classes Offered this Year
Undergrad
ECON 1110 - Intermediate Microeconomics (Pedro Dal Bo, Spring)
ECON 1870 - Game Theory and Applications to Economics (Francisco Campos Ortiz, Spring)
ECON 1465 - Market Design: Theory and Applications (Itay Fainmesser, Fall)
ECON 1460 - Industrial Organization (Itay Fainmesser, Fall)
Grad
ECON 2010 - Mathematics for Economists (Mark Dean, Fall)
ECON 2050 - Microeconomics I (Roberto Serrano, Fall)
ECON 2060 - Microeconomics II (Kfir Eliaz, Spring)
ECON 2090 - Topics in Microeconomic Theory (Mark Dean, Fall)
ECON 2180 - Game Theory (Kfir Eliaz and Francoise Forges, Spring)
ECON 2530 - Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Louis Putterman, Spring)
Experiments
Brown University Social Science Experimental Laboratory (BUSSEL): students interested in the possibility of being invited to participate in future experiments as decision-making subjects can click here.
Links
For those who want more, click here.