ABSTRACT:Individuals who bracket decisions narrowly ignore the consequences of one decision when making another decision. Such behavior is well documented in experiments where subjects make decisions in the absence of strategic considerations. This paper uses an economic experiment to investigate whether people also bracket their decisions in games. Subjects played two Volunteer’s Dilemmas at the same time, with the payoffs from both games added to their earnings. Aggregate play in the game is not consistent with predictions made by assuming all subjects bracket either narrowly or broadly. On the individual level, structural modeling suggests that most subjects bracket narrowly in the game.
SUBMISSION HISTORY
- Games and Economic Behavior: Submitted November 2017, rejected April 2018
- Experimental Economics: Submitted May 2018, rejected July 2018
- Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics: Submitted July 2018. Revise & Resubmit. Resubmitted December 2018
- Accepted 2019-03-28
- Published online 2019-03-29
