Robin P Cubitt - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Robin P Cubitt

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

In cross‐modal decisions, the options differ on many attributes, and in uni‐modal decisions, they... more In cross‐modal decisions, the options differ on many attributes, and in uni‐modal decisions, they differ on few. We supply new theory and data to understand how discounting for both delay and risk differs between cross‐modal and uni‐modal decisions. We propose the attentional dilution effect in decision making in which (a) allocation of limited attention to an attribute determines that attribute's decision weight and (b) the attention an attribute receives is increasing in the difference between options on that attribute and decreasing in the number of other attributes that differ between options. We introduce the random order delayed compensation method and conduct two experiments focusing on delayed and risky receipt of consumer goods. Consistent with the attentional dilution effect, we find that in this domain, patience and risk tolerance are generally higher in cross‐modal than uni‐modal decisions. We suggest that, since many real‐world choices are cross‐modal, people may be...

Social Science Research Network, 2010

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Sep 15, 2017

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2010

The paper reports an experiment which tests the principle of separability, i.e. that behaviour in... more The paper reports an experiment which tests the principle of separability, i.e. that behaviour in a dynamic choice problem is independent of history and of unreachable eventualities. Although this is a well-known principle of orthodox decision theory and central to conventional economic modelling, it has been questioned on grounds suggested by non-expected utility models of choice under risk and by the psychology of affective influences on risk-taking. Our experimental design, which provides between-subjects tests of separability using three treatments in which the history preceding a decision is manipulated, is inspired by these concerns. We expose separability to a clean and harsh test, but find no evidence that it is violated.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2011

The game-theoretic assumption of 'common knowledge of rationality' leads to paradoxes when ration... more The game-theoretic assumption of 'common knowledge of rationality' leads to paradoxes when rationality is represented in a Bayesian framework as cautious expected utility maximisation with independent beliefs (ICEU). We diagnose and resolve these paradoxes by presenting a new class of formal models of players' reasoning, inspired by David Lewis's account of common knowledge, in which the analogue of common knowledge is derivability in common reason. We show that such models can consistently incorporate any of a wide range of standards of decision-theoretic practical rationality. We investigate the implications arising when the standard of decision-theoretic rationality so assumed is ICEU. Short title Common reasoning in games Keywords Common reasoning; common knowledge; common knowledge of rationality; David Lewis; Bayesian models of games.

Social Science Research Network, 2015

Highlights  We investigate the association between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion... more Highlights  We investigate the association between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion.  Using a standard elicitation method we find little evidence for it.  We develop a new vignette-based method to measure betrayal aversion.  Using the vignettes, we find strong and replicable evidence for an association.

Experimental Economics, Dec 9, 2010

In this paper, we report an experimental investigation of the effect of framing on social prefere... more In this paper, we report an experimental investigation of the effect of framing on social preferences, as revealed in a one-shot linear public goods game. We use two indicators to measure social preferences: self-reported emotional responses; and, as a behavioural indicator of disapproval, punishment. Our findings are that, for a given pattern of contributions, neither punishment nor emotion depends on the Give versus Take framing that we manipulate. To this extent, they suggest that the social preferences we observe are robust to framing effects.

Economics Books, 2009

Za početak, valja razjasniti na što se točno pojam eksperimentalna ekonomika u ekonomskoj literat... more Za početak, valja razjasniti na što se točno pojam eksperimentalna ekonomika u ekonomskoj literaturi odnosi. On se ponajprije odnosi na istraživanja u kojima se podaci prikupljaju u kontroliranim umjetnim (laboratorijskim) uvjetima, gdje se najčešće sudionici na slučajan način svrstavaju u eksperimentalnu i kontrolnu skupinu te se potom uspoređuju rezultati tih dviju skupina. Međutim, pojam se ponekad koristi i u općenitom smislu za označavanje "empirijskog" pristupa u ekonomskoj znanosti, nasuprot deduktivnog pristupa. Rad Edwarda Chamberlina "An Experimental Imperfect Market" (1948) obično se smatra prvim radom iz eksperimentalne ekonomike 1. Djelomično inspiriran Chamberlinovim radom, Vernon L. Smith je davnih 60-ih godina prošlog stoljeća u SAD-u započeo svoj istraživački program iz eksperimentalne ekonomike. Vjerojatno nije mislio da će svojim radom potaknuti razvoj cijele jedne grane ekonomske znanosti. Naravno, teško je takav učinak pripisati jednom čovjeku, ali Vernon L. Smith je jedan od najzaslužnijih za popularizaciju korištenja eksperimentalnih metoda u ekonomici. Njegov doprinos razvoju eksperimentalne ekonomike je 1 Iako se istraživanje Chamberlina (1948) najčešće uzima kao prvo istraživanje iz eksperimentalne ekonomike, zapravo je psiholog Thurstone (1931) proveo prvo "pravo" istraživanje u ekonomici pokušavajući provjeriti teoriju potrošačkog izbora. Uz malo labavije kriterije moglo bi se otići i dalje u prošlost kao što to čine autori knjige.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Jul 1, 2005

The paper considers what can be inferred about experimental subjects' time preferences for consum... more The paper considers what can be inferred about experimental subjects' time preferences for consumption from responses to laboratory tasks involving tradeoffs between sums of money at different dates, if subjects can reschedule consumption spending relative to income in external capital markets. It distinguishes three approaches identifiable in the literature: the straightforward view; the separation view; and the censored data view. It shows that none of these is fully satisfactory and discusses the resulting implications for intertemporal decision-making experiments.

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty

The Description-Experience gap (DE gap) is widely thought of as a tendency for people to act as i... more The Description-Experience gap (DE gap) is widely thought of as a tendency for people to act as if overweighting rare events when information about those events is derived from descriptions but as if underweighting rare events when they experience them through a sampling process. While there is now clear evidence that some form of DE gap exists, its causes, exact nature, and implications for decision theory remain unclear. We present a new experiment which examines in a unified design four distinct causal mechanisms that might drive the DE gap, attributing it respectively to information differences (sampling bias), to a feature of preferences (ambiguity sensitivity), or to aspects of cognition (likelihood representation and memory). Using a model-free approach, we elicit a DE gap similar in direction and size to the literature’s average and find that when each factor is considered in isolation, sampling bias stemming from under-represented rare events is the only significant driver ...

Management Science, 2017

Unimodal intertemporal decisions involve comparing options of the same type (e.g., apples now ver... more Unimodal intertemporal decisions involve comparing options of the same type (e.g., apples now versus apples later), and cross-modal decisions involve comparing options of different types (e.g., a car now versus a vacation later). As we show, existing models of intertemporal choice do not allow time preference to depend on whether the comparisons to be made are unimodal or cross-modal. We test this restriction in an experiment using the delayed compensation method, a new extension of the standard method of eliciting intertemporal preferences that allows for assessment of time preference for nonmonetary and discrete outcomes, as well as for both cross-modal and unimodal comparisons. Participants were much more averse to delay for unimodal than cross-modal decisions. We provide two potential explanations for this effect: one drawing on multiattribute choice, the other drawing on construal-level theory. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2613 . This paper was accept...

Theory and decision library, 1997

Noncooperative game theory is often interpreted as a theory of how games would be played if playe... more Noncooperative game theory is often interpreted as a theory of how games would be played if players were rational. On this view, its central project is to discover which strategies are rationally justifiable and which are not, in any game. In this paper, we consider whether the conventional assumptions of modern game theory equip it to fulfil this project. We present an impossibility result which concerns the extent to which they can do so. The result can be seen as strengthening a claim established by Borgers and Samuelson (1992) and Samuelson (1992). 13.2 AN IMPOSSIBILITY RESULT We will consider finite, normal form, noncooperative games; the set of all such games is denoted by G. We shall say that a strategy is justifiable for a player if and only if it would be an optimal choice for her, given some coherent set of beliefs. A set of beliefs is coherent if and only if it is internally consistent and 293

Theory and Decision, 2018

We report an experiment where each subject's ambiguity sensitivity is measured by an ambiguity pr... more We report an experiment where each subject's ambiguity sensitivity is measured by an ambiguity premium, a concept analogous to and comparable with a risk premium. In our design, some tasks feature known objective risks and others uncertainty about which subjects have imperfect, heterogeneous, information ("ambiguous tasks"). We show how the smooth ambiguity model can be used to calculate ambiguity premia. A distinctive feature of our approach is estimation of each subject's subjective beliefs about the uncertainty in ambiguous tasks. We find considerable heterogeneity among subjects in beliefs and ambiguity premia; and that, on average, ambiguity sensitivity is about as strong as risk sensitivity. Keywords Ambiguity sensitivity • Ambiguity attitude • Measuring strength of ambiguity sensitivity • Smooth ambiguity model • Ambiguity premium B Gijs van de Kuilen