{"title":"Rational inattention in games: experimental evidence","authors":"David Almog, Daniel Martin","doi":"10.1007/s10683-024-09843-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>To investigate whether attention responds rationally to strategic incentives, we experimentally implement a buyer-seller game in which a fully informed seller makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a buyer who faces cognitive costs to process information about the offer’s value. We isolate the impact of seller strategies on buyer attention by exogenously varying the seller’s outside option, which leads sellers to price high more often. We find that buyers respond by making fewer mistakes conditional on value, which suggests that buyers exert higher attentional effort in response to the increased strategic incentives for paying attention. We show that a standard model of rational inattention based on Shannon mutual information cannot fully explain this change in buyer behavior. However, we identify another class of rational inattention models consistent with this behavioral pattern.</p>","PeriodicalId":47992,"journal":{"name":"Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Experimental Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-024-09843-z","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
To investigate whether attention responds rationally to strategic incentives, we experimentally implement a buyer-seller game in which a fully informed seller makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a buyer who faces cognitive costs to process information about the offer’s value. We isolate the impact of seller strategies on buyer attention by exogenously varying the seller’s outside option, which leads sellers to price high more often. We find that buyers respond by making fewer mistakes conditional on value, which suggests that buyers exert higher attentional effort in response to the increased strategic incentives for paying attention. We show that a standard model of rational inattention based on Shannon mutual information cannot fully explain this change in buyer behavior. However, we identify another class of rational inattention models consistent with this behavioral pattern.
期刊介绍：
Experimental methods are uniquely suited to the study of many phenomena that have been difficult to observe directly in naturally occurring economic contexts. For example, the ability to induce preferences and control information structures makes it possible to isolate the effects of alternate economic structures, policies, and market institutions.Experimental Economics is an international journal that serves the growing group of economists around the world who use experimental methods. The journal invites high-quality papers in any area of experimental research in economics and related fields (i.e. accounting, finance, political science, and the psychology of decision making). State-of-the-art theoretical work and econometric work that is motivated by experimental data is also encouraged. The journal will also consider articles with a primary focus on methodology or replication of controversial findings. We welcome experiments conducted in either the laboratory or in the field. The relevant data can be decisions or non-choice data such as physiological measurements. However, we only consider studies that do not employ deception of participants and in which participants are incentivized. Experimental Economics is structured to promote experimental economics by bringing together innovative research that meets professional standards of experimental method, but without editorial bias towards specific orientations. All papers will be reviewed through the standard, anonymous-referee procedure and all accepted manuscripts will be subject to the approval of two editors. Authors must submit the instructions that participants in their study received at the time of submission of their manuscript. Authors are expected to submit separate data appendices which will be attached to the journal''s web page upon publication. Officially cited as: Exp Econ
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