RISS Seminar
- Date
- June 15, 2023 Open at 15:30 / Start at 16:30-around 18:30
- Venue
- RISS Multimedia Laboratory, Senriyama Campus, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan and Online（Zoom）
- Lecturer
- Wooyoung Lim（The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology）
- Title
- “Lying and Deception in Repeated Communication” joint with Syngjoo Choi (SNU) and Chanjoo Lee (SNU)
- Abstract
- Lying and deception are common in economic interactions and have important strategic implications. While related, they are distinct phenomena that may have different effects on communication outcomes. In this paper, we study repeated communication with a reputation concern in a two-dimensional belief domain, and identify two environments where lying and deception are completely separated. In one environment, the sender must tell the truth to conceal a bad intention, while in the other, the sender must lie to reveal a good intention. Our experimental data show that the proportion of senders who successfully build reputations is lower than predicted in both environments. Furthermore, the deviation from theory is greater when reputation-building requires lying rather than deception. Finally, we observe that receivers punish senders for lying, even when the intention behind it is good. Our findings suggest that different communication mechanisms may perform differently depending on their reliance on lying or deception, highlighting the need to distinguish between these two concepts investigating organizational and political phenomena.
- Details
- ※Researchers only
RISS Workshop
- Date
- May15,2023 Open at 15:30 / Start at 16:00-around17:20
- Venue
- RISS Multimedia Laboratory, Senriyama Campus, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan and Online（Zoom）
- Lecturers
- Toshihiko Nanba（Associate Professor, Kyoto University of Advanced Science）
- Title
- "Salesforce Compensation Design via Reinforcement Learning"（joint with Takahiro Inada 【KUAS】）
- Abstract
- We investigate the optimal sales force compensation plans in a multiperiod moral-hazard model. In our model, the firm offers the sales agent an incentive contract based on sales, but only obtains aggregate information on sales. Meanwhile, the sales agent strategically chooses his or her own effort in every period, taking the contract into consideration. To analyze these intricate scenarios, we introduce various frameworks that integrate reinforcement learning and neural networks, specifically employing Q-Learning, Deep Q Network(DQN), and Actor-Critic with deep learning. Our findings reveal that the firm favors a linear incentive contract over quota-based contract when the quota frequency is relatively short or when the sales agent exhibits impatience. Moreover, we find that a quota-based contract is optimal for the firm when the sales agent’s cost is relatively low.
- Details
- ※Researchers only
RISS Workshop
- Date
- May12,2023 Open at 15:30 / Start at 16:00-around17:20
- Venue
- RISS Multimedia Laboratory, Senriyama Campus, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan and Online（Zoom）
- Lecturers
- Masao Nagatsuka（Associate Professor, Osaka Gakuin University）
- Title
- "Obviously Dominant BDM Lotteries Experiments"
- Abstract
- This study aims to improve the BDM method (Becker, deGroot, and Marschak (1964)), which has been used in experimental economics to induce consumers to reveal their true willingness to pay, using findings from behavioral mechanism design. The BDM method performs extremely well theoretically, with truthful willingness-to-pay as a weak dominance strategy. However, it has been reported that the BDM method's concept of separating the stated amount from the payment amount may confuse experimental subjects and may not induce them to declare their true willingness to pay. Recently, in mechanism design, Li (2017) has shown that the reason why English auctions with the ascending method have better experimental performance than second-price auctions with the sealed-bid method, which have the same theoretical structure as the BDM method, is Obviouly strategy-proofness.In this study, we test whether applying the mechanism design of Li (2017), which takes Obviously Strategy-proofness into account, to the BDM method facilitates the declaration of the true willingness-to-pay amount by the following experimental conditions. (1) normal BDM, (2) ascending BDM, and (3) ascending BDM to test the effect of obviously strategyproofness. The results show that (1) normal BDM performs close to the theoretical value, and there is no statistically significant difference between normal BDM and ascending BDM. Future work is needed to validate the performance of ascending BDM under conditions where normal BDMs are known not to perform well.
- Details
- ※Researchers only
RISS Workshop
- Date
- November 18,2022 Open at 13:30 / Start at 14:00-around16:30
- Venue
- RISS Multimedia Laboratory, Senriyama Campus, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan and Online（Zoom）
- Lecturers
- 1.Tetsuya Kawamura（Lecturer, Tezukayama University）
2.Andrzej Baranski（Assistant Professor, NYU Abu Dhabi） - Title
- 1."Behavioral change and cognitive ability in repeated prisoner’s dilemma game experiments"
2."Competing for Proposal Rights: Theory and Experimental Evidence" - Abstract
- 1.We examine whether cognitive ability affects the cooperative behavior of non-student participants in repeated prisoner’s dilemma experiments. The results show that high cognitive ability participants (1) cooperate more in the presence of the infinitely repeated condition (IFR) than the finitely repeated condition (FR), (2) cooperate more as the expected number of stage games in a round increases under the IFR, and (3) do not cooperate more as the number of stage games in a round increases under the FR. The strategy frequency estimation in the case of IFR suggests that for high cognitive ability, when the expected number of stage games increases, the share of grim trigger strategy increases while the defective strategy is less employed. Thus, high cognitive ability participants change their behavior according to the situation. Additionally, the behavior of low cognitive ability participants do not seem to change; the cooperation rate remains unchanged despite the conditions. However, the strategy frequency estimation in the case of IFR reveals a slight change in the participants ’behavior, based on the situation. Overall, this reveals a low cooperation rate.
2.Competition for positions of power is a common practice in most organizations including legislatures, firms, industry standard boards, and academic departments. We study theoretically and experimentally how different voting rules affect the incentives to compete for the right to propose a distribution of benefits via sequential bargaining. Our experimental findings uncover a novel efficiency trade-off absent in theory: While gridlock is stronger under unanimity, majoritarian bargaining elicits higher competition costs. The gridlock effect mildly dominates initially, but with experience, both rules yield equal efficiency levels challenging a longstanding notion on the preeminence of majoritarian rules. The distribution of benefits is affected by the endogeneity of proposal rights contrary to behavioral expectations: Subjects gravitate towards equitable sharing and proposers often do not keep the lion's share. Our results hold robustly under different bargaining protocols and subject samples. - Details
- ※Researchers only
RISS Workshop
- Date
- January 26,2022 9:00-11:00
- Venue
- Online（Zoom）
- Lecturers
- 1.Masaru Inaba(Professor,Kansai University)
2.Tomohide Mineyama(IMF) - Title
- 1."What drives fluctuations of labor wedge and business cycles? Evidence from Japan" (joint with Kengo Nutahara[Senshu University] and Daichi Shirai[Tohoku Gakuin University])
2."Cyclicality and Asymmetry of the User Cost of Labor: Evidence and Theory" (joint with Toshitaka Maruyama [UCLA]) - Abstract
- 1.The literature has empirically verified that the labor wedge worsens during recession. Taking this statement into consideration, this study poses two questions: First, what is the main driving force of the labor wedge, and second, is the main driver of the labor wedge the same as that of business cycles? In this study, we employ a commonly used medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with nominal and real frictions to analyze which structural shocks drive the fluctuation of the labor wedge and of business cycles. The model is estimated using Japanese data. Our estimation strategy is a particularly novel approach. In standard Bayesian estimation, the prior distribution of the parameters for the standard deviations of the structural shocks is the inverse gamma distribution, which does not support zero value and assumes the existence of structural shocks. By contrast, we employ a more flexible prior distribution of the parameters for the standard deviations of structural shocks and measurement errors to allow for the non-existence of structural shocks. Under the standard prior distribution, the estimation results imply that the labor wedge is mainly driven by preference and transitory technology shocks, whereas the investment adjustment cost shock is the most important for the business cycle fluctuations. However, under our relaxed prior distribution, which allows for the non-existence of structural shocks, the estimation results imply that both the labor wedge and business cycles are mainly driven by permanent technology and investment adjustment cost shocks.
2.The user cost of labor (UCL) plays an allocative role in a wide class of macroeconomic models. Despite this appealing feature, estimating the UCL involves empirical challenges as it requires a sequence of wages from hiring until separation. The cyclical changes in the average quality of new matches weigh on measuring the cyclicality of the UCL. In this paper, we overcome these challenges by exploiting unique Japanese data, which tracks wages at each tenure after school graduation. Our empirical findings are twofold. First, the UCL remains highly procyclical after controlling for the cyclical changes in the average job-match quality, whereas the new-hire wage is no longer more cyclical than the incumbent-worker wage. Second, downward adjustments of the UCL are smaller than upward ones. The downward rigidity arises from the combination of that of the new-hire and incumbent-worker wages. We then develop a wage posting model to account for these observations. We demonstrate that under asymmetric information, firms use wages as a screening tool to receive the application from targeted workers and maintain a high value of a posted contract in recessions, leading to the downward rigidity and overall high cyclicality of the UCL. - Details
- ※Researchers only
RISS Workshop
- Date
- December 8,2021 17:00-19:00
- Venue
- Online(Zoom)
- Lecturer
- Kayoko Kobayashi (Associate professor,Nanzan University)
- Title
- A perspective of adaptive rationality: The Ultimatum Game as an Illustrative Example
RISS Workshop
- Date
- October 27,2021 17:00 - 18:00
- Venue
- Online（Zoom）
- Lecturer
- Youngrok Kim（RISS Postdoctoral Fellow,Kansai University ）
- Title
- Card or cash? Evidence regarding consumers' VAT compliance
- Abstract
- Cashless payments discourage value-added tax (VAT) evasion through transaction records; these cashless payments essentially require cooperation from consumers and small business owners. As indirect VAT payers, consumers’ payment methods decisively influence the final VAT declaration. However, literature has yet to investigate consumers’ VAT compliance. This study uses data from approximately 7,300 taxpayers as collected by the National Survey of Tax and Benefit of South Korea to examine the impacts of perceived trust, service, and enforcement paradigms on consumers’ responses to payment methods when small business owners offer low-, moderate, and high-discount benefits. The results reveal that regardless of the discount amount, perceived trust, government service, and enforcement significantly strengthen consumers’ VAT compliance. We also discover that as the discount amounts increase, trust has a greater impact on VAT compliance. The study contributes to tax literature by demonstrating that enforcement, trust, and services can improve consumers’ VAT compliance.
RISS Workshop
- Date
- September 8, 2021 14:00-15:00
- Venue
- Online(Zoom)
- Lecturer
- Hiroyuki Aman（Professor,Faculty of Business and Commerce,Kwansei Gakuin University）
- Title
- Personal Preference for Sustainable Investment: the Impacts of Moral and Literacy
- Abstract
- We attempt to measure personal preference for sustainable investment (SI) to examine the determinants by using a questionnaire survey in Japan. Our result shows that approximately thirty percent of respondents have a favorable preference for SI on pro-environmental firms even if the return is relatively poor. This is indicative of non-peculiar motivation of households for SI. Further, we examine the effects of personal moral and literacy on the motivation. First, we find that persons who have a high financial moral (strong aversion to money) have a positive attitude to SI. Second, high environmental moral tends to reduce the preference for SI, inconsistent with our prediction. Third, we find no evidence on the impact of environmental literacy. Finally, persons with high financial literacy tend to attach importance to the profitability of SI.
RISS Workshop
- Date
- June 30,2021 16:30-17:30
- Venue
- Online(Zoom)
- Lecturer
- Taizo Motonishi（Professor, Faculty of Economics,Kansai University）
- Title
- "Is nationwide screening for obesity and cardiometabolic risks in Japan effective?"
- Abstract
- This paper clarifies the effects of nationwide screening for obesity and cardiometabolic risks in Japan.
A regression discontinuity design is used to analyze the NDB data to explore the impact of being judged eligible for the specific health guidance on people's health status and behavior.
International Workshop for Lab and Field Experiments
- Date
- March 17-18, 2021
- Venue
Umeda Campus, Kansai University, Osaka, JapanThis workshop will be held online.- Co-organized
- Japanese Economic Association,Research Center for Behavioral Economics,
Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, and
Institute of Socionetwork Strategy Research, Kansai University - SCOPE
- Experiments, both laboratory and field, were once considered to be impossible in economics. They are now, however, considered to be a main research method in economics. These changes are reflected in the list of recent winners of Nobel Prize in economics: on one hand, Vernon Smith (winner in 2002) and Al Roth (winner in 2012) have deep connections with the development of experimental studies in the lab., on the other hand, Elenor Ostrom (winner in 2009), Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer (winners in 2019) with field experiments.
While laboratory experiments mainly aim to test theoretical implications or functioning of various economic mechanisms in highly controlled settings, field experiments aim to do so in more natural settings. Furthermore, field experiments, especially, through randomized controlled trials, aim to evaluate the effectiveness of various economic policies.
Despite this global development in the field of economics, researchers employing experimental methods in their research are still merely a small minority among Japanese economists. To boost the field of experimental economics in Japan by providing an international forum for researchers to exchange their ideas and problems, we invite you to submit your research covering a broad range of topics related to economic experiments to be presented at this two-day international workshop. We welcome any topics of laboratory and field experiments, and encourage especially young researchers to submit their work.
Selected papers presented at this workshop will be published in a special issue of Japanese Economic Review which is scheduled to be published in January 2022. - KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
- John Duffy (Professor, Department of Economics, University of California, Irvine, United States)
Lata Gangadharan (Professor of Economics and Joe Isaac Chair of Business and Economics, Monash University, Australia)