This paper explores the binary choice of an agent who must allocate her attention to noisy information obtained from costly experimentation to improve her knowledge in a context of uncertainty.We model a two period-lived agent who must decide whether to invest or not in each period. Initial...

Are refugees likely to be nasty in a gated community? This paper investigates the willingness of Syrian refugee groups in the Zaatari refugee camp to engage in destructive behavior under the shadow of scarcity and competition. The paper uses the joy-of-destruction game to test the exogenous...

The indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma (IRPD) captures the trade-off between the short-term payoff from exploiting economic partners and the long-term gain from building successful relationships. We aim to understand more about how people form and use beliefs about others in the IRPD. To...

Social dilemmas are among the most puzzling issues in the biological and social sciences. Extensive theoretical efforts have been made in various realms such as economics, biology, mathematics, and even physics to figure out solution mechanisms to the dilemma in recent decades. Although...

We aim to understand the role and evolution of beliefs in the indefinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma (IRPD). To do so, we elicit beliefs about the supergame strategies chosen by others. We find that heterogeneity in beliefs and changes in beliefs with experience are central to understanding...

We explore the influence of cognitive ability and judgment on strategic behavior in the beauty contest game. Using the level-k model of bounded rationality, cognitive ability and judgment both predict higher level strategic thinking. However, individuals with better judgment choose the Nash...