The seminar will be held on campus in the Sir Duncan Rice library, Lower Ground Seminar Room on October 2nd from 3pm - 4:15pm.
Join Dr Miguel Ángel Meléndez Jiménez, Professor of Economics at Department of Economic Theory and Economic History in University of Málaga. Dr Meléndez-Jiménez’s research fields are Economics of Networks, Experimental Economics, and Game Theory.
Abstract:
“We develop an experiment on the “Netflix game”, a version of the model by Gerke et al. (JET 2024) inspired by the online streaming provider Netflix. In this game, individuals are arranged in a social network, and each of them decides either to purchase an account or not to purchase it. If an individual purchases an account, she then nominates κ neighbors in the network as co-beneficiaries, where κ is the individuals’ sharing capacity. As Gerke et al. (2024) show, a reduction in the sharing capacity may result in the appearance of (additional) equilibria in which less individuals purchase an account, which we call the “Netflix paradox”.
This setup leads to a problem of equilibrium selection, since for the paradox to materialize individuals need to coordinate in the (additional) equilibrium with less purchases (which is more efficient for the individuals as a group and detrimental for the company that sells accounts). We address this problem by designing two experiments with two treatments each, which share the same network structure and vary in the sharing capacity. Compared to the treatment with the high sharing capacity, the treatment with the low capacity has an additional equilibrium in which less individuals purchase, and still all of them get access. We study the subjects’ ability to coordinate in this extra equilibrium and find a potential to do so when reciprocity is allowed.”
- Speaker
- Dr Miguel Ángel Meléndez Jiménez
- Hosted by
- University of Aberdeen Business School
- Contact
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No booking required.