Timothy Cason, Professeur d’économie émérite, Université Purdue, Indiana, Etats-Unis

Mardi 3 novembre 2026, nous accueillons Timothy Cason, Professeur d'économie émérite à l'Université Purdue, Indiana, Etats-Unis, Timothy Cason est également titulaire de la chaire Gadomski et Directeur du laboratoire d'économie expérimentale Vernon Smith.

Ses thèmes de recherche :

• organisation industrielle
• économie expérimentale et comportementale
• économie de l'environnement

Titre de sa présentation : Communication, Guilt, and Agency Risk with Payoff Externalities

Résumé : This study examines an agency setting with payoff externalities, where social efficiency is maximized only if all parties cooperate. We design an experiment to investigate how different types of communication affect cooperation and efficiency. Communication is hypothesized to impact beliefs, which affect the psychological costs, such as guilt, of choosing certain actions. A baseline treatment allows no communication opportunities. Three communication treatments introduce (a) a single, one-way private message from the agent to the principal and additionally, (b) chat within principal-agent pairs or (c) between all agents and principals whose payoffs are affected by actions. Participants provide complete, incentivized first and second order beliefs. Chat communication significantly increases cooperation for all players, while one-way messages raise cooperation only among principals but not agents. Beliefs match observed behavior. For example, the one-way private message has asymmetric effects on first- and second-order beliefs of principals and agents, suggesting that beliefs shape cooperative choices in line with simple guilt aversion.

 
Le séminaire a lieu à 11h15, au GAEL.