In: The journal of legal studies, 2016, vol. 45, no. 2, p. 331-366
An authority delegates a monitoring task to an agent. Thereby, it can observe the number of detected offenders but not the monitoring intensity chosen by the agent or the resulting level of misbehavior. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the implementability of monitoring policies. When several monitoring intensities lead to an observationally identical outcome, only the...
|
In: The journal of mathematical sociology, 2013, vol. 37, no. 3, p. 159-191
Although both betweenness and closeness centrality are claimed to be important for the effectiveness of someone’s network position, it has not been comprehensively studied which networks emerge if actors strive to optimize their centrality in the network in terms of betweenness and closeness. We study each of these centrality measures separately, but we also analyze what happens if actors...
|
In: Review of Economic Design, 2012, vol. 16, no. 1, p. 71–87
Since the seminal contribution of Jackson and Wolinsky (J Econ Theory 71(1):44–74, 1996) it has been widely acknowledged that the formation of social networks exhibits a general conflict between individual strategic behavior and collective outcome. What has not been studied systematically are the sources of inefficiency. We approach this omission by analyzing the role of positive and...
|
(Working Papers SES ; 488)
Successful performance – be it in school, at the job, or in sports activities – requires perseverance, i.e., persistent work on a demanding task. We investigate in a controlled laboratory experiment how an individual’s social environment affects perseverance. We find evidence for two kinds of peer effects: being observed by a peer can serve as a commitment device, while observing a peer can...
|
(Working Papers SES ; 486)
We investigate how the selection process of a leader affects team performance with respect to social learning. We use a lab experiment in which an incentivized guessing task is repeated in a star network with the leader at the center. Leader selection is either based on competence, on self-confidence, or made at random. Teams with random leaders do not underperform compared to rather competent...
|
(Working Papers SES ; 485)
We study private communication in social networks prior to a majority vote on two alternative policies. Some (or all) agents receive a private imperfect signal about which policy is correct. They can, but need not, recommend a policy to their neighbors in the social network prior to the vote. We show theoretically and empirically that communication can undermine efficiency of the vote and hence...
|