IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2201.10141.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Benefits of Coarse Preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Y. Halpern
  • Yuval Heller
  • Eyal Winter

Abstract

We study the strategic advantages of coarsening one's utility by clustering nearby payoffs together (i.e., classifying them the same way). Our solution concept, coarse-utility equilibrium (CUE) requires that (1) each player maximizes her coarse utility, given the opponent's strategy, and (2) the classifications form best replies to one another. We characterize CUEs in various games. In particular, we show that there is a qualitative difference between CUEs in which only one of the players clusters payoffs, and those in which all players cluster their payoffs, and that the latter type induce players to treat co-players better than in Nash equilibria in the large class of games with monotone externalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Y. Halpern & Yuval Heller & Eyal Winter, 2022. "The Benefits of Coarse Preferences," Papers 2201.10141, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2201.10141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.10141
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steiner, Jakub & Stewart, Colin, 2015. "Price distortions under coarse reasoning with frequent trade," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 574-595.
    2. Jehiel, Philippe & Koessler, Frédéric, 2008. "Revisiting games of incomplete information with analogy-based expectations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 533-557, March.
    3. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    4. Jan Potters & Sigrid Suetens, 2009. "Cooperation in Experimental Games of Strategic Complements and Substitutes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(3), pages 1125-1147.
    5. Mukesh Eswaran & Hugh M. Neary, 2014. "An Economic Theory of the Evolutionary Emergence of Property Rights," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 203-226, August.
    6. Daskalova, Vessela & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2020. "Categorization and coordination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    7. Mohlin, Erik, 2014. "Optimal categorization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 356-381.
    8. Yuval Heller & Eyal Winter, 2020. "Biased-Belief Equilibrium," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 1-40, May.
    9. Jehiel, Philippe, 2005. "Analogy-based expectation equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 81-104, August.
    10. Friedman, Daniel & Singh, Nirvikar, 2009. "Equilibrium vengeance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 813-829, July.
    11. Nick Netzer, 2009. "Evolution of Time Preferences and Attitudes toward Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 937-955, June.
    12. Fershtman, Chaim & Kalai, Ehud, 1997. "Unobserved Delegation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(4), pages 763-774, November.
    13. Ron Berman & Yuval Heller, 2020. "Naive analytics equilibrium," Papers 2010.15810, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2021.
    14. Fershtman, Chaim & Gneezy, Uri, 2001. "Strategic Delegation: An Experiment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 352-368, Summer.
    15. Renou, Ludovic, 2009. "Commitment games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 488-505, May.
    16. Heifetz, Aviad & Shannon, Chris & Spiegel, Yossi, 2007. "What to maximize if you must," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 31-57, March.
    17. Bade, Sophie & Haeringer, Guillaume & Renou, Ludovic, 2009. "Bilateral commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1817-1831, July.
    18. Aviad Heifetz & Chris Shannon & Yossi Spiegel, 2007. "The Dynamic Evolution of Preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(2), pages 251-286, August.
    19. Dufwenberg, Martin & Guth, Werner, 1999. "Indirect evolution vs. strategic delegation: a comparison of two approaches to explaining economic institutions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 281-295, June.
    20. Eddie Dekel & Jeffrey C. Ely & Okan Yilankaya, 2007. "Evolution of Preferences -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 685-704.
    21. Eyal Winter & Luciano Méndez-Naya & Ignacio García-Jurado, 2017. "Mental Equilibrium and Strategic Emotions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1302-1317, May.
    22. Herold, Florian & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2009. "Evolutionary stability of discrimination under observability," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 542-551, November.
    23. Arieli, Itai & Babichenko, Yakov & Tennenholtz, Moshe, 2017. "Sequential commitment games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 297-315.
    24. Azrieli, Yaron, 2009. "Categorizing others in a large game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 351-362, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tóbiás, Áron, 2023. "Rational Altruism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 50-80.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Berman, Ron & Heller, Yuval, 2020. "Naive Analytics Equilibrium," MPRA Paper 103824, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Yuval Heller & Eyal Winter, 2016. "Rule Rationality," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(3), pages 997-1026, August.
    3. Tóbiás, Áron, 2023. "Rational Altruism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 50-80.
    4. Yuval Heller & Eyal Winter, 2020. "Biased-Belief Equilibrium," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 1-40, May.
    5. Heller, Yuval & Sturrock, David, 2020. "Promises and endogenous reneging costs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    6. Daskalova, Vessela & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2021. "Learning frames," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 78-96.
    7. Heller, Yuval & Mohlin, Erik, 2019. "Coevolution of deception and preferences: Darwin and Nash meet Machiavelli," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 223-247.
    8. Norman, Thomas W.L., 2012. "Equilibrium selection and the dynamic evolution of preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 311-320.
    9. Florian Gauer & Christoph Kuzmics, 2020. "Cognitive Empathy In Conflict Situations," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1659-1678, November.
    10. Sivan Frenkel & Yuval Heller & Roee Teper, 2018. "The Endowment Effect As Blessing," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1159-1186, August.
    11. repec:grz:wpaper:2016-02 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Daskalova, Vessela & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2020. "Categorization and coordination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    13. Possajennikov Alex, 2010. "On Delegation in Contests and the Survival of Payoff Maximizing Behavior," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-13, June.
    14. Yasar, Alperen, 2023. "Power struggles and gender discrimination in the workplace," SocArXiv t4g83, Center for Open Science.
    15. Roee Teper, 2014. "The Endowment Effect as a Blessing," Working Paper 5862, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    16. Alger, Ingela & Weibull, Jörgen W., 2016. "Evolution and Kantian morality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 56-67.
    17. Domenico De Giovanni & Fabio Lamantia, 2016. "Control delegation, information and beliefs in evolutionary oligopolies," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(5), pages 1089-1116, December.
    18. Philippe Jehiel & Erik Mohlin, 2023. "Categorization in Games: A Bias-Variance Perspective," Working Papers halshs-04154272, HAL.
    19. Ingela Alger & Laurent Lehmann, 2023. "Evolution of Semi-Kantian Preferences in Two-Player Assortative Interactions with Complete and Incomplete Information and Plasticity," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 1288-1319, December.
    20. Philippe Jehiel, 2022. "Analogy-Based Expectation Equilibrium and Related Concepts:Theory, Applications, and Beyond," Working Papers halshs-03735680, HAL.
    21. Jehiel, Philippe & Mohlin, Erik, 2021. "Cycling and Categorical Learning in Decentralized Adverse Selection Economies," Working Papers 2021:11, Lund University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2201.10141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.