We report on an experiment that uses revealed preference to distinguish between rational social learning and behavioral bias. Subjects must choose between receiving a private signal or observing the past guesses of other subjects before guessing the state of the world. The design varies the persistence of the state across time. This changes whether choosing social or private information is opti...

Are people willing to gamble more for themselves than what they deem reasonable for others? We addressed this question in a simplified computer gambling task in which subjects chose from a set of 10 cards. Subjects selected one card at a time after being instructed that 9 cards were good (win a dollar per card) and one was really bad (lose all the money and end the game). Subjects could stop pl...

It seems easy to accept that rationality involves many features that cannot be summarized in terms of some straightforward formula, such as binary consistency.  However, this recognition does not immediately lead to alternative characterizations that might be regarded as satisfactory, even though the inadequacies of the traditional assumptions of rational behavior standard used in economic theo...

In this paper, using a within-subjects design, we estimate the utility weights that subjects attach to the outcome of their interaction partners in four decision situations: (1) binary Dictator Games (DG), second player's role in the sequential Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) after the first player (2) cooperated and (3) defected, and (4) first player's role in the sequential Prisoner's Dilemma game. W...

This paper studies the causal effect of individuals’ overconfidence and bounded rationality on information aggregation. To do that, we construct a new multi-period game in which agents are rewarded for submitting accurate estimates of an unknown asset’s value based on (1) their private information, and (2) others’ past estimates. We carry out laboratory sessions of this game in which subjects’ ...

Given the positive integers m,n, solving the well known symmetric Diophantine equation xm+kyn=zm+kwn, where k is a rational number, is a challenge. By computer calculations, we show that for all integers k from 1 to 500, the Diophantine equation x6+ky3=z6+kw3 has infinitely many nontrivial (y≠w) rational solutions. Clearly, the same result holds for positive integers k whose cube-free part is n...

this paper seeks to trace some of the roots and problems of the rational view of innovation. concentrating primarily upon product innovation, we point out that the eighteenth century notion of social progress in the light of reason has gradually given an enormous impetus to a rational view of product innovation in modern organizations. we summarize several decades of research into management of...

background successful pregnancy is the ultimate goal of almost all couples. however, this pleasant event is usually accompanied psychological and behavioral changes and can result in stress in women, particularly women who pregnant by assisted reproductive technology methods (arts). objectives this study aims to determine the anxiety level during pregnancy and its relation with infertility fact...

This paper aims to explore the role of questions in communication in a group of cooperative rational agents. Using epistemic representation of questions proposed in [6] we employ the framework of public announcement logic to explore the flow of information in the process of asking and replying questions in a group. We show that some of the erotetic notions we introduce nicely correspond to the ...