Psychological games: theory & experiments

Abstract

Belief-dependent motivation is important for understanding economic outcomes regarding e.g. anxiety & health, status & conformity, vengeance & wage rigidity, and guilt & contracts. The intellectual/mathematical home for describing belief-dependent motivation is an extension of traditional game theory labeled psychological game theory. My lecture will present this framework, as well as discuss how one can shed light on the empirical relevance of applications through experimental tests.