Ronald Peeters (Otago): On generosity in public good and charitable dictator games
Abstract: We examine the relationship between generosity in charitable dictator games (CDGs) andpublic good games (PGGs). We construct a novel generalized game that subsumes both as special
cases and present experimental subjects with different blends of CDG and PGG tasks. Generosity inthe CDG and PGG are only weakly correlated, in spite of close experimental control on confounding
factors. We furthermore demonstrate how underlying preferences shape these behaviors, revealing
important distinctions between preferences for charity and public good provision. Our findings have
implications for the generalizability of existing experimental results that rely upon these games.

Chanelle Duley (UoA): Cultural assimilation and nation building
Abstract: We present a model of cultural assimilation characterised by a trade-off between
miscoordination and lock-in. Individuals use shared values to predict how others are likely to behave
and sometimes find it optimal to forego intrinsic preferences by assimilating into the behaviour ofanother cultural group. Nation building policies affect this trade-off. When individuals can costlessly
switch between social behaviours, nation building is unambiguously welfare improving. But when
behaviours provide intrinsic benefits, nation building has social costs -- under compulsion to adopt asalient behaviour, a proportion of society experiences lock-in, with cultural distance determining
whether costs are concentrated in a single cultural group. We derive testable implications and clarify
conditions under which politically motivated governments fail to choose socially optimal nationbuilding policies. Overall, our results temper the benefits of traditional assimilationist nationbuilding.
Simona Fabrizi (UoA): Voting Behaviour with an Asymmetric Loss Function: Understanding theExperimental Evidence
Abstract: There is a small literature that tests binary voting behaviour in the laboratory – think ofvoting in a jury trial (but without discussion between jurors). Most of these experiments use
symmetric loss functions – both types of error (convicting the innocent and acquitting the guilty)
receive the same penalty – even when the unanimity rule is used to determine the outcome (i.e., thedefendant is acquitted unless all jurors vote guilty). There is one extant study (Anderson et al., 2015)that employs a loss function with a higher penalty for convicting the innocent, and its results showby far the largest difference between the data and the theoretical prediction. We have conducted
two more voting experiments involving an asymmetric loss function. This talk discusses our results,
as well as those of Anderson et al. (2015) and assesses the prospects of reconciling the data withtheory.

Norimichi Matsueda (Kwansei Gakuin University): Strategic Individual Behaviors and the Efficient
Vaccination Subsidy
Abstract: This study addresses the issue of socially desirable vaccination subsidy provided by thegovernment against an infectious disease, by incorporating several different suppositions concerning
the behaviors of individuals within a social group. The vaccine promotion has become a very
prominent public agenda in the society's efforts to contain health and economic damages due to therecent outburst of COVID-19, but not much attention has been paid to an exact scale and natures of
efficient vaccination subsidy even in the context of more common infectious diseases, such as aseasonal influenza. While it is generally accepted that health and economic damages arisen from aseasonal influenza in total clearly overwhelm the social cost of vaccination, not enough share of the
population has been vaccinated to get anywhere close to the status of herd immunity even in a welldeveloped country, partly due to a significantly low level of vaccination subsidy.
In considering a desirable level of vaccination, it is important to acknowledge the spill-over effects ofvaccination/non-vaccination not only from the societal perspective but also from each individual'sviewpoint. When the vaccine is effective against the transmission of a communicable disease, thevaccination of one individual lowers the infection possibilities of other individuals (i.e., vaccination isa classic example of a positive externality). In determining whether he or she will get vaccinated, anindividual takes into account the overall vaccination rate, and because of this, a typical Pigouvian
measure is not an efficient policy measure. In this study, we resort to different behavioral
conjectures for individual behaviors on their vaccination choices and discuss their implication for thesocially efficient level of vaccination subsidy.
As an intriguing result, we show, even in a standard Nash conjecture where each individual correctlypredicts the resulting infectiousness of a disease and makes a vaccination decision before it actually
arrives, those individuals generally over-react to the changes in the virulency of a disease and also inthe scale of the side-effects of a vaccination, and, therefore, an efficient level of vaccination subsidy
needs to take these strategic behaviors into consideration as well as other variables. Furthermore,
we show when it is optimal to provide a vaccination free of charge to the public in general and how
the result depends on the individual behaviors and their expectations in choosing whether or not tovaccinate themselves.
Doriani Lingga (UoA): The News Media Bargaining Code: A Two-sided Market Framework
Abstract: The recent News Media Bargaining Code passed by the Australian government mandates
giant digital platforms to pay a lump-sum compensation to news media providers in the country. Asimilar law was later adopted by Canada, while other countries, including the UK, the EU, and New
Zealand, are considering similar moves. Combining a two-sided market and Nash bargaining models,
this study features a bilateral monopoly, consisting of a digital platform and a media provider,
potentially attracting viewers and advertisers from each side of the market. The analysis highlights
the roles of negative externalities incurred by viewers from advertisements and the positive network
externalities enjoyed by advertisers from the presence of viewers in an outlet. Furthermore, itdemonstrates how the entities involved behave strategically in choosing the associated variables tobenefit the most from Nash bargaining. The variables include advertisement prices chosen by bothentities, the subscription fee, and the level of content visibility by the media provider.
Matthew Ryan (AUT): Revealed "Luce rationality"
Abstract: This project (which is very much work-in-progress) explores connections between three
topics: the Luce model of stochastic choice, conditional probability systems and common priors fordifferentially informed agents. These topics analyse very similar mathematical structures. We showthat two important recent results on Luce models have precursors in the other two researchareas. We leverage these connections to generate new insights into the classical Luce model.

Steffen Lipper (UoA): "Leadership and Cooperation in a Sequential Prisoners’ Dilemma"
Abstract: Endogenous leadership in economic games has been shown to elicit greater levels ofleader-follower cooperation than exogenously determined leadership. We contribute to thisliterature by modelling a sequential prisoners dilemma with endogenous leadership selection. In theTransparent treatment, a Principal determines the order of play which is then communicated to theAgent, whilst in the Opaque treatment this choice is not. We test this theory with an experiment(N=300) and conclude that endogenous leadership elicits greater Second Mover cooperation inresponse to cooperation when compared to an exogenous control treatment, but First Movercooperation is consistent between treatments and type (Principal or Agent). We also find that rates
of self-selection of Principals into leadership are consistent between Transparent and Opaquetreatments. Additionally, we find evidence that Psychopathy predicts defection, whilst
Machiavellianism and Narcissism do not.

Asha Sadanand (University of Guelph): “Selten’s Horse: an experiment on sequential rationality”
Abstract: In a seminal paper, Selten (1975) developed the game Selten's Horse to illustrate some
aspects of rationality. In our study, we test the equilibrium predictions of Selten's Horse through alaboratory experiment, and we find that most of the behaviour is not according to existing
conventional refinements that adhere to sequential rationality. Some, though not all, behaviour isbetter explained by the notion of Ideal Reactive Equilibrium (Sadanand 2019) which has developed
from an extension of Manipulated Nash Equilibrium (Amershi, Sadanand and Sadanand 1985a, b, c.)With potential for errors and experimenting in real human behaviour, Quantal Response Equilibrium
provides a good fit, and Level-k thinking provides the best fit for our data. Actual behaviour can bepredicted reasonably well by a simple model of Level–-k thinking in which we also incorporate theidea of virtual observability, according to which the players behave as if their subsequent players
behave as if observe their actions. We find evidence that the participants' behaviour indeed
conforms to virtual observability to some extent, but this is limited to immediate successors. Level-k
thinking is prevalent in the more complex version of the game than the original game. Moreover, inthat game we see first movers naively move towards their most preferred equilibrium and follower
players anticipate such behaviour and exploit it by systematically reaching off-equilibrium outcomesthat are more favourable to them.

Paul Calcott (VUW): “Choosing between imperfect proxies for a corrective tax”
Abstract: Choices are sometimes distorted by internalities or externalities. This paper considers asetting in which the distortion cannot be taxed directly and asks how a policymaker should choose aproxy variable to tax instead. We derive a criterion for when one proxy should be preferred toanother and consider a range of factors with implications for this criterion. These factors are (i)sensitivity to the tax rate, (ii) how accurately the taxed variable approximates the distorted variable,(iii) susceptibility to offsetting behaviour, and (iv) consumer heterogeneity. Our analysis is illustrated
with a comparison between ad valorem and volumetric taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages.

Onur Koska (Canterbury): “Labor-Eliminating Technological Progress and Foreign Direct
Investment”
Abstract: Capital scarce developing countries heavily depend on the inflow of foreign direct
investment (FDI) to sustain economic growth. However, if a developing economy experiences laboreliminating technical progress, such inflow of capital may replace labor in manufacturing. This maycompel policy makers to advocate for a foreign investment tax to restrict the inflow of capital into
manufacturing as the sector faces a labor-eliminating technical change. Contrary to this view,modeling labor-eliminating technical change in a general equilibrium specific factors model, weshow that, when such technical progress is financed by FDI, wages will rise and any policy that
restricts inflow of foreign capital does not benefit workers.