Ágnes Pintér

College Admissions and the Role of Information: An Experimental Study

We analyze two well-known matching mechanisms—the Gale-Shapley, and the Top Trading Cycles (TTC) mechanisms—in the experimental lab in three different informational settings, and study the role of information in individual decision making. Our results suggest that—in line with the theory—in the college admissions model the Gale-Shapley mechanism outperforms the TTC mechanisms in terms of efficiency and stability, and it is as successful as the TTC mechanism regarding the proportion of truthful preference revelation. In addition, we find that information has an important effect on truthful behavior and stability. Nevertheless, regarding efficiency, the Gale-Shapley mechanism is less sensitive to the amount of information participants hold.

Does Payoff Equity Facilitate Coordination? A Test of Schelling's Conjecture

Starting from Schelling (1960), several game theorists have conjectured that payoff equity might facilitate coordination in normal-form games with multiple equilibria – the more equitable equilibrium might be selected either because fairness makes it focal or because many individuals dislike payoff inequities, as abundant experimental evidence suggests. In this line, we propose a selection principle called Equity (EQ), which selects the equilibrium in pure strategies minimizing the difference between the highest and smallest money payoff, if only one such equilibrium exists. Using a within-subjects experimental design, furthermore, we study the relative performance of EQ in twelve simple 2×2 coordination games. In many of these games, we find that EQ explains individual behavior better than a large range of alternative theories, including theories of bounded rationality and several other equilibrium selection principles. Yet we also observe that the frequency of EQ play depends on the payoff structure of the game. For instance, EQ play diminishes when the alternative equilibrium is socially efficient and not very unfair (compared with the EQ equilibrium). Our data suggests that equilibrium selection is affected by several factors and that subjects are heterogeneous in this respect, but also that equity is often a crucial factor to understand coordination.

Would Depositors Like to Show Others that They Do Not Withdraw? Theory and Experiment

There is an asymmetry regarding what previous decisions depositors may observe when choosing whether to withdraw or keep the money deposited: it is more likely that withdrawals are observed. We study how decision-making changes if depositors are able to make their decision to keep their funds in the bank visible to subsequent depositors at a cost. We show theoretically in a Diamond-Dybvig setup that without this signaling option multiple equilibria are possible, while signaling makes the no-run outcome the unique equilibrium. We test if the theoretical predicitions hold in a lab experiment. We find that indeed when signaling is available, bank runs are less likely to arise and signaling is extensively used.