Research

"The Importance of Being Even: Restitution and Cooperation"  (Draft)

(with Maria Bigoni, Marco Casari, Andrzej Skrzypacz, Giancarlo Spagnolo)

We study – empirically and theoretically – how restitution helps restore cooperation. After a breach, restitution strategies “propose” returning to cooperation by cooperating against defection, and condition actions on the balance between the cooperation given and received. We reanalyze experimental data from three classes of repeated games and find compelling empirical support for restitution strategies in general and for a strategy we named Payback in particular. Considering restitution strategies enables to resolve discrepancies between theory and experiments emerging from prior literature - such as the prevalent use of non-equilibrium strategies like Tit-for-tat - and questions the predominance of memory-one strategies.

"Choice by Associations" (Draft coming soon)

(with Jose Apesteguia and Francesco Cerigioni)

It has been amply shown that choice behavior is context-dependent. Evidence from the cognitive sciences suggests that such dependency might be driven by implicit associations. In this paper, we propose and study a choice-based model of contextual associations. We start by formalizing contexts by the set of concepts it contains. We then introduce associations by way of the implicit relationship between alternatives and concepts, which directly impacts the utility evaluation of alternatives. We study the empirical content of the model, its comparative statics, and several variations of the model. We argue that the model could be instrumental in understanding a wide range of phenomena, and derive new predictions.