Jeffrey Jude Kline’s research while affiliated with The University of Queensland and other places

Inductive game theory was developed to study the emergence of the subjective views of various individuals in a recurrent social situation. In this paper, we develop a constructive approach for obtaining an inductively derived view (i.d.view). More specifically, we consider two methods: one is a benchmark general case, and the other is a special case taking causality in memories more explicitly into account. The first method is shown to capture the full set of i.d.views in the sense of Kaneko and Kline (Econ Theory 53(1):27–59, 2013). The second method allows us to focus on a finite set of natural candidate i.d.views. We argue that these methods facilitate future work on bounded rationality in interactive settings.

We introduce linguistic ambiguity into a principal–agent contracting framework. Contracts are drafted in a common language. Nevertheless, the principal and the agent may ultimately disagree about the terms of the contract that apply ex post. We presume that both parties are ambiguity averse and for tractability reasons that their preferences take a recursive constant absolute risk averse (RCARA) form. We consider various dispute resolution regimes and analyze how the optimal dispute resolution regime depends on the ambiguity attitudes of the parties. We also provide an axiomatization of the class of RCARA preferences.

Thought experiments are commonly used in the theory of behavior in the presence of risk and uncertainty to test the plausibility of proposed axiomatic postulates. The prototypical examples of the former are the Allais experiments and of the latter are the Ellsberg experiments. Although the lotteries from the former have objectively specified probabilities, the participants in both kinds of experiments may be susceptible to small deviations in their subjective beliefs. These may result from a variety of factors that are difficult to check in an experimental setting: including deviations in the understanding and trust regarding the experiment, its instructions and its method. Intuitively, an experiment is robust if it is tolerant to small deviations in subjective beliefs in models that are in an appropriate way close to the analyst's model. The contribution of this paper lies in the formalization of these ideas.

This note establishes an equivalence between the graph-based definition of an infinite extensive form game [following Kuhn (Contributions to the theory of games II, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp 193–216, 1953)] and the sequence-based definition by Osborne and Rubinstein (A course in game theory, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994).

We conduct an experimental study on behavior and cognition in various 2×2 games with/without role-switching from the perspective of inductive game theory (IGT). Here, subjects have no prior knowledge about payoffs and can only learn them by playing the game. Without role-switching, subjects can, and many do, successfully learn their own payoffs. To learn the payoffs of the other, role-switching is required. While this gives more information about the whole structure, subjects do not learn all payoffs successfully. This partial learning allows us to study interactions between behavior and cognition. We find that role-switching has both behavioral and cognitive effects. On the behavioral side, without role-switching, many subject pairs converged to a Nash eq. With role-switching, a significant number of subject pairs converged to either Nash or ICE (intrapersonal coordination eq.) maximizing the average payoffs, as predicted by IGT. On the cognitive side, correct recall of payoffs is positively correlated with the number of experiences but is negatively correlated with convergence to some action pair. Here, some forms of forgetfulness are involved. In particular, when convergence occurs, the other action pairs do not appear and the memories about those payoffs once learned decay and disappear.

We conduct an experimental study on behavior and cognition in various 2×2 games with/without role-switching from the perspective of inductive game theory (IGT). Here, subjects have no prior knowledge about payoffs and can only learn them by playing the game. Without role-switching, subjects can, and many do, successfully learn their own payoffs. To learn the payoffs of the other, role-switching is required. While this gives more information about the whole structure, we observe that subjects do not learn all payoffs successfully. This partial learning allows us to study interactions between behavior and cognition. We find that role-switching has both behavioral and cognitive effects. On the behavioral side, without role-switching, many subject pairs converged to a Nash equilibrium. With role-switching, a significant number of subject pairs converged to either Nash or ICE (intrapersonal coordination eq.) maximizing the average payoffs, as predicted by IGT. On the cognitive side, we find that correct recall of payoffs is positively correlated with the number of experiences but is negatively correlated with convergence to some action pair. Here, some forms of forgetfulness are involved. In particular, when convergence occurs, the other action pairs do not appear and the memories about those payoffs once learned decay and disappear. JEL Classification Numbers: C72, C79, C91

We conduct an experimental study on behavior and cognition in various 2×2 games with/without role-switching from the perspective of inductive game theory (IGT). Here, subjects have no prior knowledge about payoffs and can only learn them by playing the game. Without role-switching, subjects can, and many do, successfully learn their own payoffs. To learn the payoffs of the other, role-switching is required. While this gives more information about the whole structure, we observe that subjects do not learn all payoffs successfully. This partial learning allows us to study interactions between behavior and cognition. We find that role-switching has both behavioral and cognitive effects. On the behavioral side, without role-switching, many subject pairs converged to a Nash equilibrium. With role-switching, a significant number of subject pairs converged to either Nash or ICE (intrapersonal coordination eq.) maximizing the average payoffs, as predicted by IGT. On the cognitive side, we find that correct recall of payoffs is positively correlated with the number of experiences but is negatively correlated with convergence to some action pair. Here, some forms of forgetfulness are involved. In particular, when convergence occurs, the other action pairs do not appear and the memories about those payoffs once learned decay and disappear.

This paper is published as "Understanding the Other through Social Roles" International Game Theory Review 17 (2015). Inductive game theory has been developed to explore the origin of beliefs of a person from his accumulated experiences of a game situation. So far, the theory has been restricted to a person’s view of the structure not including another person’s thoughts. In this paper, we explore the experiential origin of one’s view of the other’s beliefs about the game situation. We restrict our exploration to a 2-role (strategic) game, which has been recurrently played by two people who occassionally switch roles. By switching roles, each person accumulates experiences of both roles and these experiences become the source of his transpersonal view about the other. Reciprocity in the sense of role-switching is crucial for deriving his own and the other’s beliefs. We consider how a person can use these for his behavior revision, and we define an equilibrium called an intrapersonal coordination equilibrium. Based on this concept, we show that cooperation will emerge as the degree of reciprocity increases.

Inductive game theory has been developed to explore the origin of beliefs of a person from his accumulated experiences of a game situation. It has been restricted to a person's view of the structure not including another person's thoughts. In this paper, we explore the experiential origin of one's view of the other's beliefs about the game situation, especially about the other's payoffs. We restrict our exploration to a 2-role (strategic) game, which has been recurrently played by two people with occasional role-switching. Each person accumulates experiences of both roles, and these experiences become the source for his transpersonal view about the other. Reciprocity in the sense of role-switching is crucial for deriving his own and the other's beliefs. We also consider how a person can use these views for his behavior revision, and we define an equilibrium called an intrapersonal coordination equilibrium. Based on this, we show that cooperation will emerge as the degree of reciprocity increases.