Behavioral Game Theory

Using the workplace as an example, consider someone called Jane who interacts with different people over time on collaborative projects. For instance, this week she is working on a project with Sam, next week she is going to work on a project with David, the week after a project with Sam, and so on. The question of interest is whether her experience, say, working with Sam influences how she behaves when working with David? This, in turn, gives us some idea of how norms can emerge and evolve within a particular workplace. Can, for example, one slacker ruin productivity across a whole firm? To make things more concrete suppose that the basic choice Jane has to make is how much effort to exert on a project. She can cooperate or slack. We can then think of a project as either a public good game or minimum effort game. In both games the best outcome for the group is mutual cooperation. The differences lie in individual incentives. In a public good game Jane maximizes her material p...