CAREER: Experimental Game Theory: Integrating Psychological Concerns with Strategic Analysis

9876079

Croson

Being an economist requires that we respond to the troubling question,

'Don't economists assume that everyone is selfish?' While it is certainly

true that most economic models involve actors who value only their own

consumption, this has long been recognized as a simplifying assumption and

not descriptively accurate. My proposed research is aimed at increasing

the descriptive accuracy of economic theory by incorporating social and

psychological concerns. The goal of my research is to demonstrate and

investigate how psychological concepts impact economic decisions. I

investigate concepts from social psychology (e.g. equity and helping

behavior) from cognitive psychology (e.g. nonconsequential reasoning and

framing) and cross-cultural psychology (e.g. collectivism and

individualism) on economic decisions like bargaining and public goods

provision. My research demonstrates the impact of these concepts on

economic behavior and suggests new, more descriptively accurate, models of human behavior.