To discuss experimental results without discussing how they came about makes sense when the results are robust to the way experiments are conducted. Experimental results, however, are – arguably more often than not – sensitive to numerous design and implementation characteristics such as the...

Adam Smith’s view of the proper role for government in commercial societies remains a source of debate. Here we sketch out in simple game-theoretic terms the numerous public-goods provision and externalities problems on display in particular in Book V of The Wealth of Nations. Casting these...

Conceptual lenses, or models (Allison 1969; Ortmann 2008), draw on stable ways of thinking about the world, or “reasoning routines”. We explore the deep structure of Adam Smith’s work, and to what extent it is the result of a set of “reasoning routines” that, at an early stage of his...

We propose a computational model to study (the evolution of) post-secondary education. Consumer who differ in quality shop around for desirable colleges or universities. Firm that differ in quality signal the availability of their services to desirable students. Colleges and universities, as...

Game theory is a branch of social sciences that formalizes decision-making in situations where two or more individuals or groups interact, possibly having conflicting interests. In Ortmann & Walraevens (2022) we have reconstructed Smith’s ways of thinking about the social world by analyzing...

To discuss experimental results without discussing how they came about makes sense when the results are robust to the way experiments are conducted. Experimental results, however, are – arguably more often than not – sensitive to numerous design and implementation characteristics such as the...

We examine the value added of tournaments that compare the predictive power of behavioral models. The advantages and disadvantages of this particular method have not been systematically discussed in the literature; here we aspire to do so. We conclude that tournaments are a useful addition to our...

Planning, operation and analysis of transportation systems hinge on theories and assumptions regarding individual choices, traffic flows, and traffic equilibria. Transportation field data collection, however, often lacks sufficient control, and therefore is often not suitable to test theories in...

We propose a computational model to study (the evolution of) post--secondary education. "Consumers" who differ in quality shop around for desirable colleges or universities that also differ in quality. We study the dynamics and asymptotics for three nested variants of this matching model: the...