Title: Player labels in tacit bargaining games - two experiments

Speaker: Dr. Jiwei Zheng is a tenured Associate Professor, PhD Supervisor, and Director of External Relations in the Department of Economics at Lancaster University Management School. Before joining Lancaster University, he served as a Senior Research Associate at Warwick Business School and the University of Leeds. Dr. Zheng’s research focuses on consumer bounded rationality and coordination/cooperation in strategic games. His work has been published in leading academic journals, including Journal of Political Economy, Management Science, Games and Economic Behavior, and European Economic Review. He also serves as a referee for several well-regarded academic journals.

Time: 16:00-17:00 pm on April 18 (Friday)

Onsite: Hong Yuan 311

Tencent Meeting: https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/PIzpvXoRckBh (meeting Id: 270-533-829)

Abstract: Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling proposed that bargainers can coordinate their expectations on one of the equilibria in a tacit bargaining game—referred to as the “focal point” of the game—by relying on their shared understanding of payoff-irrelevant aspects of the context. This study reports two experiments investigating how player labels (i.e., irrelevant but commonly recognised characteristics of the bargainers themselves) influence behaviour in tacit bargaining games. Our results show that when players are labelled as “male” and “female,” or as “king” and “duke,” their behaviour in these games changes systematically. We conclude that player labels can significantly affect behaviour in tacit bargaining games and should therefore be taken into account when analysing individuals’ behaviour in strategic situations.