Adverse selection and contingent reasoning in preadolescents and teenagers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Brocas, Isabelle; Carrillo, Juan D.
• 署名单位: University of Southern California; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2022.03.010
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 331-351
• 关键词: Developmental decision-making; Lab-in-the-field experiment; Contingent reasoning; Winner's curse

摘要

We study from a developmental viewpoint the ability to perform contingent reasoning and the cognitive abilities that facilitate optimal behavior. Individuals from 11 to 17 years old participate in a simplified version of the two-value, deterministic acquire-a company adverse selection game (Charness and Levin, 2009; Martinez-Marquina et al., 2019). We find that even our youngest subjects understand well the basic principles of contingent reasoning (offer the reservation price of one of the sellers), although they do not necessarily choose the optimal price. Performance improves steadily and significantly over the developmental window but it is not facilitated by repeated exposure or feedback. High cognitive ability-measured by a high performance in a working memory task-is necessary to behave optimally in the simplest settings but it is not sufficient to solve the most complex situations. (C) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.