Conformity behavior, i.e. the agreement between an individual's choices and the prevailing behavior of a reference group, is a commonly observed phenomenon. Though some types of social interactions may give raise to specific incentives to adopt either a majoritarian or a contrarian behavior, we...

Rational choice theory analyzes how an agent can rationally act, given his or her preferences, but says little about where those preferences come from. Instead, pref- erences are usually assumed to be �xed and exogenously given. Building on related work on reasons and rational choice (Dietrich...

We build a model where introspection matters - i.e., people rationally form expectations about others using the lens of their own attitudes. Since trustworthy individuals are more "optimistic" about people than opportunists, they are less afraid to engage in market-based exchanges, where they...

We test the assumption that preferences are unchanged throughout a strategic game in the absence of feedback. To do so, we study the relationship between the strategic nature of a game and players' identification in social groups. We present evidence that the strategic nature of the game affects...

Substantial evidence has accumulated in recent empirical works on the limited ability of the Nash equilibrium to rationalize observed behavior in many classes of games played by experimental subjects. This realization has led to several attempts aimed at finding tractable equilibrium concepts...

This paper explores the rationality of status concerns amongst co-workers and the impact of such rational status concerns on a firm's profits. We find that it is individually rational for agents in a firm to develop and exhibit status concerns. Workers are, by their choices of status concerns,...

What determines trade patterns? Habit persistence in consumer tastes and learning-by-doing in production imply that history and culture are key determinants. Deriving a dynamic gravity equation from a simple model, it is shown that cultural similarity is a product of history, so that trade...

I offer an approach linking a welfare criterion to the opportunities for sustainable development in an imperfect economy. The approach implies a dependence of the criterion on the economy's current state. The economy-linked criterion is constructed using an example with the maximin principle...

Andrew Levine analyses the theoretical legacy of recent Marxist schools, focusing in particular on analytical Marxism (AM). He argues that AM is uniquely suited to provide the foundations for a revival of Marxist theory. In this paper, Levine’s reconstruction of the core of Marxism and his...

It is commonly assumed that identification with a social group is constant throughout the play of a one-shot game in the absence of feedback. We provide evidence which challenges this assumption. We direct subjects to play one of two versions of the prisoner's dilemma game. These versions are...