Buridanic competition

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bachi, Benjamin; Spiegler, Ran
• 署名单位: Max Planck Society; University of London; University College London
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.10.024
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 298-315
• 关键词: Trade-off avoidance; COMPETITION; Choice complexity; Default bias; Behavioral industrial organization; Multi-attribute products

摘要

We analyze a model of two-attribute competition for a decision maker who follows a non-compensatory choice procedure that only responds to ordinal rankings along the two dimensions. The decision maker has an outside option that functions as a default alternative. In the absence of a dominant alternative, the decision maker may stick to the default even if it is dominated capturing the phenomenon of choice procrastination in the presence of difficult choices. We show that the prevalence of difficult-choice situations in equilibrium is related to the magnitude of the choice procrastination effect. In general, features of the choice procedure that are typically viewed as biases tend to protect the decision maker, in the sense that they encourage competitors to offer higher-value alternatives in equilibrium. We discuss the potential implications of this analysis for recent discussions of default architecture. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.