Joel Sobel
Biographic Data
| ID | 5730478 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joel Sobel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joel |
| FAMILY NAME | Sobel |
| SIGNATURE | SOBEL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Joel Sobel is Professor of Economics, University of California—San Diego, La Jolla, California. |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Parag Pathak: Winner of the 2018 Clark Medal
The American Economic Association awarded Parag Pathak the 2018 John Bates Clark Medal for his research on the impacts of educational policies. Both the theory and the empirical research take the constraints facing administrators seriously. As a result, Parag’s research led directly to educational reforms in many large US cities and abroad. The leading example is Parag (and co-authors’) research on school assignment mechanisms that led many schoo…
Lying and Deception in Games
This article proposes definitions of lying, deception, and damage in strategic settings. Lying depends on the existence of accepted meanings for messages but does not require a model of how the audience responds to messages. Deception does require a model of how the audience interprets messages but does not directly refer to consequences. Damage requires consideration of the consequences of messages. Lies need not be deceptive. Deception does not…
Lying Aversion and the Size of the Lie
This paper studies lying. An agent randomly picks a number from a known distribution. She can then report any number and receive a monetary payoff based only on her report. The paper presents a model of lying costs that generates hypotheses regarding behavior. In an experiment, we find that the highest fraction of lies is from reporting the maximal outcome, but some participants do not make the maximal lie. More participants lie partially when th…
Interdependent Preferences and Reciprocity
Experiments, ethnography, and introspection provide evidence economic agents do not act to maximize their narrowly defined self interest. Expanding the domain of preferences to include the utility of others provides a coherent way to extend rational choice theory. There are two approaches for including extended or social preferences in strategic models. One posits that agents have extended preferences, but maintains the conventional assumption th…
Can We Trust Social Capital
How to Count to One Thousand
An agent must verify that n objects are present. While counting, the agent might lose track and need to start over. The scheme that minimizes the expected counting time involves several layers in which objects are grouped into stacks, which are grouped into stacks of stacks, and so on. The size of each division depends only on the probability of making a mistake; the number of levels in the process increases with the logarithm of the size of the …
Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games
This paper studies the sequential equilibria of signaling games. It introduces a new solution concept, divine equilibrium, that refines the set of sequential equilibria by requiring that off-the-equilibrium-path beliefs satisfy an additional restriction. This restriction rules out implausible sequential equilibria in many examples. We show that divine equilibria exist by demonstrating that a sequential equilibrium that fails to be divine cannot b…
A Theory of Credibility
This paper presents models in which one agent must decide whether to trust another, whose motives are uncertain. Reliability can only be communicated through actions. In this context, it pays for people to build a reputation based on reliable behaviour; someone becomes credible by consistently providing accurate and valuable information or by performing useful services. The theory provides a justification for long-term arrangements without bindin…
Strategic Information Transmission
This paper develops a model of strategic communication, in which a better-informed Sender (S) sends a possibly noisy signal to a Receiver (R), who then takes an action that determines the welfare of both. We characterize the set of Bayesian Nash equilibria under standard assumptions, and show that equilibrium signaling always takes a strikingly simple form, in which S partitions the support of the (scalar) variable that represents his private inf…
Lying and Deception in Games
This article proposes definitions of lying, deception, and damage in strategic settings. Lying depends on the existence of accepted meanings for messages but does not require a model of how the audience responds to messages. Deception does require a model of how the audience interprets messages but does not directly refer to consequences. Damage requires consideration of the consequences of messages. Lies need not be deceptive. Deception does not…
How to Count to One Thousand
An agent must verify that n objects are present. While counting, the agent might lose track and need to start over. The scheme that minimizes the expected counting time involves several layers in which objects are grouped into stacks, which are grouped into stacks of stacks, and so on. The size of each division depends only on the probability of making a mistake; the number of levels in the process increases with the logarithm of the size of the …
Strategic Information Transmission
This paper develops a model of strategic communication, in which a better-informed Sender (S) sends a possibly noisy signal to a Receiver (R), who then takes an action that determines the welfare of both. We characterize the set of Bayesian Nash equilibria under standard assumptions, and show that equilibrium signaling always takes a strikingly simple form, in which S partitions the support of the (scalar) variable that represents his private inf…
A Theory of Credibility
This paper presents models in which one agent must decide whether to trust another, whose motives are uncertain. Reliability can only be communicated through actions. In this context, it pays for people to build a reputation based on reliable behaviour; someone becomes credible by consistently providing accurate and valuable information or by performing useful services. The theory provides a justification for long-term arrangements without bindin…
Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games
This paper studies the sequential equilibria of signaling games. It introduces a new solution concept, divine equilibrium, that refines the set of sequential equilibria by requiring that off-the-equilibrium-path beliefs satisfy an additional restriction. This restriction rules out implausible sequential equilibria in many examples. We show that divine equilibria exist by demonstrating that a sequential equilibrium that fails to be divine cannot b…
How to Count to One Thousand
An agent must verify that n objects are present. While counting, the agent might lose track and need to start over. The scheme that minimizes the expected counting time involves several layers in which objects are grouped into stacks, which are grouped into stacks of stacks, and so on. The size of each division depends only on the probability of making a mistake; the number of levels in the process increases with the logarithm of the size of the …
Can We Trust Social Capital
Interdependent Preferences and Reciprocity
Experiments, ethnography, and introspection provide evidence economic agents do not act to maximize their narrowly defined self interest. Expanding the domain of preferences to include the utility of others provides a coherent way to extend rational choice theory. There are two approaches for including extended or social preferences in strategic models. One posits that agents have extended preferences, but maintains the conventional assumption th…
Lying Aversion and the Size of the Lie
This paper studies lying. An agent randomly picks a number from a known distribution. She can then report any number and receive a monetary payoff based only on her report. The paper presents a model of lying costs that generates hypotheses regarding behavior. In an experiment, we find that the highest fraction of lies is from reporting the maximal outcome, but some participants do not make the maximal lie. More participants lie partially when th…
Parag Pathak: Winner of the 2018 Clark Medal
The American Economic Association awarded Parag Pathak the 2018 John Bates Clark Medal for his research on the impacts of educational policies. Both the theory and the empirical research take the constraints facing administrators seriously. As a result, Parag’s research led directly to educational reforms in many large US cities and abroad. The leading example is Parag (and co-authors’) research on school assignment mechanisms that led many schoo…
Lying and Deception in Games
This article proposes definitions of lying, deception, and damage in strategic settings. Lying depends on the existence of accepted meanings for messages but does not require a model of how the audience responds to messages. Deception does require a model of how the audience interprets messages but does not directly refer to consequences. Damage requires consideration of the consequences of messages. Lies need not be deceptive. Deception does not…
Economics (7 works) · Game Theory and Applications (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (3 works) · Game Theory and Voting Systems (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Artificial Intelligence (2 works) · Auction Theory and Applications (2 works)