Economics Seminar: Tuğçe Çuhadaroğlu (University of St. Andrews)

Sabancı University
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

ECONOMICS SEMINAR

Interdependent Choice and Influence

by

Tuğçe Çuhadaroğlu

(University of St Andrews)

April 26, 2017, Wednesday

11:45-13:10  FASS 2034

Interaction, the act of mutual influence, is an essential part of daily life and economic decisions. Individuals influence each other’s decisions in many different ways. For an outside observer it is not always straightforward to infer how influence has taken place by only observing  the decision outcomes. In this talk we present two related attempts to investigating this question. First we introduce a particular individual decision procedure for interacting individuals. According to our model, individuals seek influence from each other for those issues that they cannot solve on their own. Following a deterministic choice-theoretic approach, we provide simple properties that aid to detect interacting individuals. Revealed preference analysis not only grants underlying preferences but also the influence acquired. Second, we move towards a more general setting and assume that the joint probability distribution of the choices of the individuals are observed. We investigate what can be learned from the joint probability functions about the underlying influence patterns. In particular we focus on conformity vs. variety seeking behaviour.