Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio University, June, 1993. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-114). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-99).

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1979 S46 / Master of Science

Not available / text

This dissertation consists of three essays related to revision games. The first essay proposes and analyzes a new model that we call “revision games,” which captures a situation where players in advance prepare their actions in a game. After the initial preparation, they have some opportunities to revise their actions, which arrive stochastically. Prepared actions are assumed to be mutually observable. We show that players can achieve a certain level of cooperation. The optimal behavior of players can be described by a simple differential equation. The second essay studies a version of revision games in which revision opportunities are asynchronous across players. In 2-player “common interest” games where there exists a best action profile for all players, this best action profile is the only equilibrium outcome of the revision game. In “opposing interest” games which are 2 x 2 games with Pareto-unranked strict Nash equilibria, the equilibrium outcome of the revision game is generically unique and corresponds to one of the stage-game Nash equilibria. Which equilibrium prevails depends on the payoff structure and on the relative frequency of the arrivals of revision opportunities for each of the players. The third essay studies a multi-agent search problem with a deadline: for instance, the situation that arises when a husband and a wife need to find an apartment by September 1. We provide an understanding of the factors that determine the positive search duration in reality. Specifically, we show that the expected search duration does not shrink to zero even in the limit as the search friction vanishes. Additionally, we find that the limit duration increases as more agents are involved, for two reasons: the ascending acceptability effect and the preference heterogeneity effect. The convergence speed is high, suggesting that the mere existence of some search friction is the main driving force of the positive duration in reality. Welfare implications and a number of discussions are provided. Results and proof techniques developed in the first two essays are useful in proving and understanding the results in the third essay. / Economics

This thesis investigates consumer search behavior in different contexts and its implications on certain market outcomes. It consists of three self-contained essays. Part one investigates if people search optimally and how price promotions (such as the provision of price discounts) influence search intensity and risk-taking behavior. We start with a typical sequential search task in a finite time horizon (with exogenously determined price dispersion) as the baseline treatment. In the two experimental treatments, exogenous discounts are introduced to the search process. The treatments differ in the amount of information on the discounts revealed to the subjects. Subjects’ search behavior is roughly consistent with optimality for a risk-neutral agent, but significantly influenced by the introduction of discount vouchers. We find that subjects’ search intensity is significantly reduced if they are in a shop that offers discounts, even when the monetary benefit induced by the discount has been taken into account. This suggests that people seem to gain extra non-monetary utility from buying a discounted product. Alternatively, subjects might overestimate the value of a discount. Following the findings in part one, we focus on price-framing effects of discounts on consumer search behavior in part two. In order to isolate the price-framing effect from all other possible influences, we adopt an extremely simple two-shop search model in which a consumer who sees the price for an item in a shop has to decide either to buy it or to incur a search cost to learn the ex-ante uncertain price in a second shop. The experiment is designed such that a rational buyer should make identical decisions in the base treatment (where prices are posted as net prices in both shops) and in the experimental treatments (where the price in one of the shops is framed as a gross price with a discount, holding the net-price constant). Using structural estimation of the observed risk preferences, we find that people tend to be more risk-averse and hence buy from the initial shop more often in the discount treatments, regardless of where the discount is offered. The seemingly trivial change to a discount-framing increases the complexity of the decision problem. Subjects reveal a tendency to stick with the comparatively less complex options more frequently as the complexity of the decision problem increases. However, this bias declines with experience, as subjects become more and more familiar with the framing. In part three, we study search behavior in a market experiment, where prices are determined endogenously by human players. More specifically, we examine the behavioral factors and the underlying mechanism which drive the widely observed asymmetric price adjustment to cost shocks (in a world with costly search behavior and information asymmetry). We show that price dispersion, as well as asymmetric price adjustment to cost shocks, arises in experimental markets, even though the standard theory predicts neither. We find that after controlling all the potential theoretical factors, the observed price dispersion can be explained by the presence of bounded rational play. Under price dispersion, asymmetric price adjustment arises naturally, as it is harder for buyers to learn that a negative cost shock has taken place. Learning is much quicker after a positive shock. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Economics, 2010

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-117).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: James W. Fredrickson and Gautam Ahuja. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Human auditory perception is suited to receiving and interpreting information from the environment but this knowledge has not been used extensively in designing computer-based information exploration tools. It is not known which aspects of sound are useful for accurately conveying information in an auditory display. An auditory display was created using PD, a graphical programming language used primarily to manipulate digital sound. The interface for the auditory display was a blank window. When the cursor is moved around in this window, the sound generated would changed based on the underlying data value at any given point. An experiment was conducted to determine which attribute of sound most accurately represents data values in an auditory display. The four attributes of sound tested were frequency-sine waveform, frequency-sawtooth waveform, loudness and tempo. 24 subjects were given the task of finding the highest data point using sound alone using each of the four sound treatments. Three dependent variables were measured: distance accuracy, numeric accuracy, and time on task. Repeated measures ANOVA procedures conducted on these variables did not rise to the level of statistical significance (α=.05). None of the sound treatments was more accurate than the other as representing the underlying data values. 52% of the trials were accurate within 50 pixels of the highest data point (target). An interesting finding was the tendency for the frequency-sin waveform to be used in the least accurate trial attempts (38%). Loudness, on the other hand, accounted for very few (12.5%) of the least accurate trial attempts. In completing the experimental task, four different search techniques were employed by the subjects: perimeter, parallel sweep, sector, and quadrant. The perimeter technique was the most commonly used.