Date: October 17th, 2024 (12:30 pm – 1:30 pm)

Speaker: John Conlon

Paper Title: Memory Rehearsal and Belief Biases

Abstract: We rely on memory to form beliefs, but we also frequently revisit memories in conversation and private reflection. I show experimentally that such rehearsal of past experiences generates systematic belief biases. Participants are given a set of experiences and then randomized to have conversations about a subset of them, either ones that reflect well or poorly on them. Such rehearsal has large effects on which of the original experiences participants can recall a week later. Crucially, participants appear naive about rehearsal effects: they take what they remember at face value when later incentivized to form accurate beliefs about the full set of original experiences. Rehearsal therefore distorts not only future recall but also future beliefs. Participants also make rehearsal choices without regard to their later distortionary effects. Intrinsic preferences for thinking about certain experiences instead drive rehearsal choices and therefore belief biases: in particular, a preference to reflect on positive experiences unintentionally generates a positivity bias in future recall and beliefs. This mechanism provides a new non-strategic channel through which seemingly motivated beliefs arise and generates novel predictions in a range of economic domains.

Bio: John Conlon is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University for the 2023-2024 academic year and an incoming Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Social and Decision Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University, where he won the David A. Wells Prize for Best Dissertation. Professor Conlon’s research interests are primarily in behavioral, experimental, and labor economics. He has published papers in Economics of Education Review, The Journal of Human Resources, and The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Date: September 26th, 2024 (12:30 pm – 1:30 pm)

Speaker: Jeff Carpenter

Paper Title: Cooperative Games and Economic Behavior

Abstract: We design an experiment to examine coalition formation in cooperative games. Using a newly designed interface, our protocol nests characteristic functions from key cooperative game theory experiments over the past half century and adds new functions to fill the gaps. The resulting data allows us to analyze the length of negotiations, which coalitions form, and the extent to which standard solution concepts predict outcomes (e.g., the core and Shapley value). Lastly, we develop a new behavioral solution concept, sequential equal shares, and test whether it performs better.

Bio: Jeffrey Carpenter is the James Jermain Professor of Political Economy at Middlebury College and is currently (or has been) an Associate Editor at Management Science, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Professor Carpenter holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Development Economics and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among other journals.

Professor Carpenter’s research interests include Experimental and Behavioral Economics with applications to Labor, Public, and Development Economics. While pursuing these interests he has conducted lab and field experiments in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.