Doctoral Research
Job Market Paper
Sustaining Coordination in a Dynamic Stag-Hunt Game
(Paper draft coming up)
[Abstract]
Coordination often unfolds over time, and successful collective action can become more resilient as it is sustained. I study a dynamic stag-hunt game in which consecutive successful coordination advances a public counter toward a protection threshold, while any failure resets it. I characterize Markov Perfect Equilibria and develop a state-dependent dynamic basin of attraction that measures the strategic uncertainty under which coordination remains optimal. In a laboratory experiment that varies group size and the safe-option payoff and elicits individual choice probabilities, subjects become more willing to take the risky action as groups approach the threshold, and coordination is highly persistent once the threshold is reached. A lower safe option payoff increases coordination, while smaller groups coordinate more only when the safe option is attractive. Individual mixing is concentrated early and fades as groups progress. These results suggest that coordination depends on how past success reshapes the strategic environment.Other Working Papers
An Experimental Study of Coarse Correlated Equilibrium for Delegation to Connected Autonomous Systems (with Timothy Cason)
Under journal review
[Abstract]
In a coarse correlated equilibrium, individuals have an incentive to delegate to a device that selects outcomes according to a known probability distribution. This delegation is made before the specific outcome is selected, analogous to a commitment to allow an autonomous vehicle to take actions on the human driver's behalf. This experiment studies individuals' willingness to delegate to such correlating devices across a range of payoff and correlating device treatments. These include games with multiple Pareto-rankable pure strategy equilibria that differ in their associated risk, as well as games without a pure strategy equilibrium in which a correlating device can raise expected payoffs relative to the unique mixed strategy equilibrium. We find that subjects seldom delegate their decision-making authority, and the rate of committing to the device decreases over time. Average earnings are significantly higher when both parties commit to it than in cases without a device. However, in games we study with multiple pure strategy Nash equilibria, one-sided commitment yields substantially lower average earnings. Future device design for connected autonomous vehicles should consider policies to promote mutual adoption.Social Norms and Coordination in a Threshold Public Good Game with Increasing Group Size
2025-2026 James A. Papke Graduate Fellowship Award
[Abstract]
Social norms can help coordinate within groups. When the group size increases with uncertainty, existing coordination may be unstable. This project employs a laboratory experiment to investigate the persistence of social norms and their influence on coordination behaviors in a threshold public good game with increasing group size. Participants will first choose one of two norms. They will then be randomly assigned a role and put into a group of four. A group starts with one member, and a new member joins with a 25% chance until the group size reaches 4. Members A and B agree on the same norm in treatment groups, while A and B differ in norm choices in control groups. C and D's norm choices are unknown in both cases. In each round, current members participate in a public goods game with a threshold of one investment, while observers remain inactive. There are four main findings of this experiment. First, there's no significant difference in the provision rates of public goods between the treatment groups and the control groups. Second, the persistence rates of both norms start higher in treatment groups but decline more rapidly when group size increases than those of the control groups. Third, the overinvestment rate increases with group size, and it is higher when conditional on no investment in the previous round. Last but not least, different response rates among group members are the key reason why a social norm persists for a shorter time. For a social planner who aims to establish a social norm that helps people coordinate as the group expands, it must be a good norm in the sense that people accept it at a similar level, so that it can persist longer.Work in Progress
Bragging or Being Modest? An Experimental Study on Perceived Value of Skills (with Jinyuqi Huang and Béla Elmshauser)
Doomsday Impacts Under Uncertainty (with Prerana Maheshwari and Talha Cakir)
Behavioral Foundations of Portfolio Choice: Evidence from Information Provision, Return Autocorrelation, and Time Consistency (with Peter Hansen and Kaushik Vasudevan)
Pre-doctoral Research
The Predictive Role of Caregiver’s Language Richness in Child Development Outcomes in Rural China (with Jingjing Gao, Tianyi Wang, Yang He, Chengfang Liu, Scott Rozelle, and Renfu Luo) Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 65, 306–316 (2023)
[Abstract]
There is rich literature on the predictive role of the caregiver's language richness in child development outcomes during caregiver-child interaction. However, it is unclear whether this is true in rural China, where many young children are still not developing to their fullest potential. Our study supplements the current evidence in rural China by answering three questions. First, is the rural caregiver's language richness associated with child development outcomes? Second, do different child characteristics, caregiver characteristics, and household poverty status affect the relationship between caregiver language richness and early child development outcomes? Third, does the caregiver's language suitability moderate the association between language richness and child development outcomes? We observed and recorded 10-minute-long videos of 591 rural children aged 6–30 months and their primary caregiver dyads in a free toy play session and collected their social-demographic information. Trained coders coded videotaped interactions to obtain measurements of the caregiver's language richness and suitability. Children were assessed for cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development. A multivariate linear regression model adjusted for covariates was used to estimate the association between the caregiver's language richness and child development outcomes. Interaction terms were then added to the adjusted model to explore the moderating role of caregivers' language suitability, child characteristics, caregiver characteristics, and household poverty status. The caregiver's language richness is positively associated with the child's cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development. The association is more pronounced for children who are boys, in later toddlerhood, or from registered poverty households. In addition, we found that the caregiver's language suitability could enhance the association between language richness and child development outcomes.Relationships Between Parenting Skills and Early Childhood Development in Rural Households in Western China (with Jingdong Zhong, Yang He, and Renfu Luo) International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(5), 1506 (2020)
[Abstract]
This paper empirically investigates the relationships between caregivers' parenting skills and early cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development of children aged 6–24 months. The study is based on data from a survey conducted in 100 villages in a typical poor rural area in western China. A total of 1715 households were enrolled in the study. In the study, Parent and Family Adjustment Scales (PAFAS), Bayley Scales of Infant Development version III (BSID-III), and a socioeconomic questionnaire were used to measure caregiver's parenting skills, child's development outcomes, and socioeconomic characteristics in sample households, respectively. Multivariate regression was used to estimate the relationship between a caregiver's parenting skills and the child's development outcomes. The results show that, first, parenting skills are positively and significantly associated with children's cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development, and the link between parenting skills and social-emotional development is the strongest; second, the correlation between parenting skills and development outcomes varies across socioeconomic characteristics and parenting skill dimensions. The results provide evidence for the relationship between parenting skills and early childhood development in rural households in western China. Our findings also suggest that interventions aimed at improving caregivers' parenting skills during the early stages are necessary for human capital development in rural China.Caregiver-Child Interaction Duration and Early Childhood Development: Videotaped Evidence of Home Play in Rural China (with Jingjing Gao, Yang He, Tianyi Wang, Chengfang Liu, and Renfu Luo)
Best Poster Presentation of 2022 KDSA Symposium