Matta, Benjamin
(2024)
Essays in Sequential Games.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
In my dissertation, I explore the intricate dynamics of decision-making in three distinct contexts: protest participation, sequential games, and delegation problems. Firstly, I develop a framework to understand why individuals engage in protests despite the costs of participation, minimal individual impact, and non-exclusive benefits. This model incorporates stochastic opportunities for participation, which determine whose decisions are crucial to the protest's success. Secondly, I introduce the concept of simplification games to address the inherent human preference for simplicity over optimal strategies in sequential games. This new game type considers players' preferences for both outcomes and strategy complexity, providing a basis for rationalizing empirical mistakes. Finally, in collaboration with a coauthor, I examine a delegation problem in which an agent holds private knowledge about the suitability of a multidimensional action. We investigate the range of outcomes the principal can achieve when there exists one dimension where their ideal actions significantly diverge. We show that there exists a mechanism through which the implemented action in the dimension with pronounced disagreement increasingly aligns with the principal's ideal uninformed action as the extent of disagreement intensifies. In every other dimension, the principal's payoff nears the level she would attain if she had access to all the information pertinent to her actions in those dimensions.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
27 August 2024 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
6 April 2024 |
| Approval Date: |
27 August 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
23 July 2024 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
99 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Economics |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
economic theory, behavioral economics, and political economy. |
| Date Deposited: |
27 Aug 2024 13:29 |
| Last Modified: |
27 Aug 2024 13:29 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/46732 |
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