I am postdoctoral associate at the Social Science division at NYU Abu Dhabi.
My research interests are a combination of theoretical and experimental social sciences.
I study how people form social and economic relations, what things they need to do to mantain them, and under what conditions such relations will be broken. In particular, I look at how personal ties or group identity strengthen these relations but also if these aspects of human sociality make relations more inefficient.
I am also interested in understanding how individuals relate and make decisions in social network settings, and the role that social networks play on how people behave.
Over the past 30 years, James Andreoni has produced a body of work like few others in public econ... more Over the past 30 years, James Andreoni has produced a body of work like few others in public economics. Motivated by a personal need to understand the determinants of prosocial behavior, and by offering a rare blend of insights from formal theory, controlled experiments, and field data, Andreoni has succeeded in elucidating the broader rele- vance of prosocial motives and their far‐reaching economic implications. This article offers an overview of his work on prosociality, highlighting some of his seminal contributions and placing them in a historical context. We argue that James Andreoni has had a unique role in the quest to ensure that others have a place in our utility functions.
• Characterization of equilibrium in a network when players have conflicting preferences. • The s... more • Characterization of equilibrium in a network when players have conflicting preferences. • The stronger individual preferences the harder to achieve coordination in choices. • When the payoff ratio is less extreme, full coordination is always an equilibrium. • When the level of conflict is low, players choosing what they prefer is not an equilibrium. a b s t r a c t In this work we characterize equilibrium introduced in configurations for networks with conflicting preferences. We use the model Hernández et al. (2013) to study the effect of three main factors: the strength of individual preferences, the level of integration in the network, and the intensity of conflict in the population. Our aim is to understand how likely is it that social outcomes are either those in which preferences dominate choices or those in which some individuals sacrifice their preferences to achieve consensus with others. Our results show that, the stronger individual preferences, the harder to achieve consensus in choices. However, in cases where the payoff ratio is less extreme, full coordination (consensus) is always an equilibrium. Finally, if the level of conflict is low, individual preferences become less relevant and all players choosing what they prefer is not an equilibrium anymore.
We examine the interplay between a person's individual preference and the social influence others... more We examine the interplay between a person's individual preference and the social influence others exert. We provide a model of network relationships with conflicting preferences, where individuals are better off coordinating with those around them, but where not all have a preference for the same action. We test our model in an experiment, varying the level of conflicting preferences between individuals. Our findings suggest that preferences are more salient than social influence, under conflicting preferences: subjects relate mainly with others who have the same preferences. This leads to two undesirable outcomes: network segregation and social inefficiency. The same force that helps people individually, hurts society.
This paper studies the conditions that improve bargaining power using threats and promises. We de... more This paper studies the conditions that improve bargaining power using threats and promises. We develop a model of strategic communication, based on the conflict game with perfect information, in which a noisy commitment message is sent by a better- informed sender to a receiver who takes an action that determines the welfare of both. Our model captures different levels of aligned- preferences, for which classical games such as stag hunt, hawk-dove, and prisoner’s dilemma are particular cases. We characterise the Bayesian perfect equilibrium with nonbinding messages under truth-telling beliefs and sender’s bargaining power assumptions. Through our equilibrium selection we show that the less conflict the game has, the more informative the equilibrium signal is and less credibility is necessary to implement it.
This article studies experimentally the conditions that improve bargaining power by means of thre... more This article studies experimentally the conditions that improve bargaining power by means of threats. The analysis centers on three essential elements of the commitment: the possibility of announcing one’s actions, the credibility of these messages, and the experience acquired in the negotiation process. For this, we chose the sequential hawk–dove game due to the fact that it is a negotiation environment with a non-equitable distribution of payoffs in equilibrium. The empirical evidence of our experiment shows that, in the first period, subjects do not realize the bargaining power of the commitment. When the game is repeated and experience increases, senders understand that using threats can work in their favor and increase their payoffs. The credibility of the messages is also relevant for the strategic move. It is common to find subjects that are strategic liars, who lose bargaining power for this behavior.
In many economic situations, a player pursues coordination or anti-coordination with her neighbor... more In many economic situations, a player pursues coordination or anti-coordination with her neighbors on a network, but she also has intrinsic preferences among the available options. We here introduce a model which allows to analyze this issue by means of a simple framework in which players endowed with an idiosyncratic identity interact on a social network through strategic complements or substitutes. We classify the possible types of Nash equilibria under complete information, finding two thresholds for switching action that relate to the two-player setup of the games. This structure of equilibria is considerably reduced when turning to incomplete information, in a setup in which players only know the distribution of the number of neighbors of the network. For high degrees of heterogeneity in the population the equilibria is such that every player can choose her preferred action, whereas if one of the identities is in the minority frustration ensues.
Over the past 30 years, James Andreoni has produced a body of work like few others in public econ... more Over the past 30 years, James Andreoni has produced a body of work like few others in public economics. Motivated by a personal need to understand the determinants of prosocial behavior, and by offering a rare blend of insights from formal theory, controlled experiments, and field data, Andreoni has succeeded in elucidating the broader rele- vance of prosocial motives and their far‐reaching economic implications. This article offers an overview of his work on prosociality, highlighting some of his seminal contributions and placing them in a historical context. We argue that James Andreoni has had a unique role in the quest to ensure that others have a place in our utility functions.
• Characterization of equilibrium in a network when players have conflicting preferences. • The s... more • Characterization of equilibrium in a network when players have conflicting preferences. • The stronger individual preferences the harder to achieve coordination in choices. • When the payoff ratio is less extreme, full coordination is always an equilibrium. • When the level of conflict is low, players choosing what they prefer is not an equilibrium. a b s t r a c t In this work we characterize equilibrium introduced in configurations for networks with conflicting preferences. We use the model Hernández et al. (2013) to study the effect of three main factors: the strength of individual preferences, the level of integration in the network, and the intensity of conflict in the population. Our aim is to understand how likely is it that social outcomes are either those in which preferences dominate choices or those in which some individuals sacrifice their preferences to achieve consensus with others. Our results show that, the stronger individual preferences, the harder to achieve consensus in choices. However, in cases where the payoff ratio is less extreme, full coordination (consensus) is always an equilibrium. Finally, if the level of conflict is low, individual preferences become less relevant and all players choosing what they prefer is not an equilibrium anymore.
We examine the interplay between a person's individual preference and the social influence others... more We examine the interplay between a person's individual preference and the social influence others exert. We provide a model of network relationships with conflicting preferences, where individuals are better off coordinating with those around them, but where not all have a preference for the same action. We test our model in an experiment, varying the level of conflicting preferences between individuals. Our findings suggest that preferences are more salient than social influence, under conflicting preferences: subjects relate mainly with others who have the same preferences. This leads to two undesirable outcomes: network segregation and social inefficiency. The same force that helps people individually, hurts society.
This paper studies the conditions that improve bargaining power using threats and promises. We de... more This paper studies the conditions that improve bargaining power using threats and promises. We develop a model of strategic communication, based on the conflict game with perfect information, in which a noisy commitment message is sent by a better- informed sender to a receiver who takes an action that determines the welfare of both. Our model captures different levels of aligned- preferences, for which classical games such as stag hunt, hawk-dove, and prisoner’s dilemma are particular cases. We characterise the Bayesian perfect equilibrium with nonbinding messages under truth-telling beliefs and sender’s bargaining power assumptions. Through our equilibrium selection we show that the less conflict the game has, the more informative the equilibrium signal is and less credibility is necessary to implement it.
This article studies experimentally the conditions that improve bargaining power by means of thre... more This article studies experimentally the conditions that improve bargaining power by means of threats. The analysis centers on three essential elements of the commitment: the possibility of announcing one’s actions, the credibility of these messages, and the experience acquired in the negotiation process. For this, we chose the sequential hawk–dove game due to the fact that it is a negotiation environment with a non-equitable distribution of payoffs in equilibrium. The empirical evidence of our experiment shows that, in the first period, subjects do not realize the bargaining power of the commitment. When the game is repeated and experience increases, senders understand that using threats can work in their favor and increase their payoffs. The credibility of the messages is also relevant for the strategic move. It is common to find subjects that are strategic liars, who lose bargaining power for this behavior.
In many economic situations, a player pursues coordination or anti-coordination with her neighbor... more In many economic situations, a player pursues coordination or anti-coordination with her neighbors on a network, but she also has intrinsic preferences among the available options. We here introduce a model which allows to analyze this issue by means of a simple framework in which players endowed with an idiosyncratic identity interact on a social network through strategic complements or substitutes. We classify the possible types of Nash equilibria under complete information, finding two thresholds for switching action that relate to the two-player setup of the games. This structure of equilibria is considerably reduced when turning to incomplete information, in a setup in which players only know the distribution of the number of neighbors of the network. For high degrees of heterogeneity in the population the equilibria is such that every player can choose her preferred action, whereas if one of the identities is in the minority frustration ensues.
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Papers by Manu Munoz