This paper experimentally studies the role of a compromise option in a repeated battle-of-the-sexes game. We find that in a random-matching environment, compromise serves as an effective focal point and facilitates coordination, but fails to improve efficiency. However, in a fixed-partnership...

This paper experimentally investigates the importance of sacrifice in affecting people’s reciprocal behavior. Our design allows us to exactly pin down how sacrifice of the sender’s own payoff matters for her perceived kindness from the eyes of the receiver in a sender-receiver game, without...

We apply an evolutionary game theory model to explain polarization, antipathy, and political activism as a consequence of the co-evolution of individuals' ideologies and attitudes toward other ideologies. We show that the evolutionary process results in a vicious cycle with individuals becoming...

We examine preference evolution under different marriage market arrangements, when preferences are influenced by own choices and parents' preferences. The dynamical system exhibits pitchfork bifurcation as the degree of sorting varies: Multiple stable equilibria arise under sufficiently random...

Building on previous literature that examines the influence of intergenerational transmission in cultural evolution, we highlight the importance of the marriage market in the determination of cultural homogeneity (“melting pot”) versus heterogeneity (“diversity”). To do so, we...