MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS & DECISION SCIENCES
E.D Howard Professor of Political Economy
Sandroni has received grants from the Institute of Aging, the Bi-National Science Foundation and Bergmann Memorial Research as well as four National Science Foundation grants for behavioral science research. He served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation and was invited Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences. He has also received the 2003 Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award, the University of Pennsylvania’s William Polk Carey Prize in Economics for Best Ph. D. Dissertation and the Hiram C. Haney Fellowship Award in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sandroni is on the editorial boards of Economic Theory and the International Journal of Game Theory.
Sandroni’s research is in the areas of behavioral sciences, strategic forecasting, economic theory, game theory, political science, and general equilibrium theory. He has published numerous journal articles in economics, political science and game theory journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Econometrica, Annals of Statistics, Review of Economic Studies, Mathematics of Operations Research, Theoretical Economics, International Journal of Game Theory, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, and Journal of Economic Theory.
Sandroni is the author (along with Peter Klibanoff, Boaz Moselle and Brett Saraniti) of Managerial Statistics: A Case-Based Approach (2005, Cengage Learning). He has also published his work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Economic Theory
Game Theory
Voting Systems
- Recent Media Coverage
Economist Intelligence Unit: Executive Briefing: Rationalization in decision making - 8/17/2009
See all Kellogg in the Media
This paper focuses on developing a new methodology adding an incentive to behave ethically into a standard voting game. In this paper, we relax one of the central assumptions in game theory: that agents' payoffs are exogenously determined by the outcomes of the game. We develop a methodology in which agents' payoffs in a game are partly determined by endogenously generated preferences over actions. In order to predict outcomes we develop a solution concept we call consistency linking agents' preferences with actual behavior in a manner analogous to Nash equilibrium. We use this methodology to analyze a model of participation in elections in which voting is costly and no vote is ever pivotal. The resulting model delivers high turnout and comparative statics that are consistent with strategic behavior.
This project applies the basic ethical game methodology we developed in an earlier paper to the problem of voting in large elections with asymmetric information. We will show that the same basic insights about voting derived in the game-theoretic literature also occur in ethical games with the advantage of a sensible micro-level model of participation in elections.
Papers by Feddersen and Sandroni (2005a and 2005b) and Coate and Colin (2005) provide an explanation for turnout in large elections. These papers introduce ethical agents who are motivated to participate when they determine that agents of their type are morally obligated to do so. Unlike previous duty-based models of participation, ethical agents' moral obligation to vote is determined endogenously as a function of the behavior of other agents. In order to predict outcomes, a solution concept called consistency links agents' preferences with actual behavior in a manner analogous to Nash equilibrium. In this paper, we address the foundational problems in ethical participation models. We show the restrictions consisteny imposes on the central notion of group identity, the incentive constraints on ethical reasoning, and the existence and uniqueness of consistent profiles.
Each period an outcome (out of finitely many possibilities) is observed. For simplicity assume two possible outcomes, a and b. Each period, a forecaster announces the probability of a occurring next period based on the past. Consider an arbitrary subsequence of periods (e.g., odd periods, even periods, all periods in which b is observed, etc). Given an integer n, divide any such subsequence into associated sub-subsequences in which the forecast for a is between bounds. We compare the forecasts and the outcomes (realized next period) separately in each of these sub-subsequences. Given any countable partition of [0,1] and any countable collection of subsequences, we construct a forecasting scheme such that for all infinite strings of data, the long run average forecast for a matches the long run frequency of realized a's.
Selected Topics in Economic Theory
This course counts toward the following majors: Management & Organizations, Social Enterprise.
The first issue a leader in the role of manager, entrepreneur, investor or stakeholder must address about an organization concerns its "value proposition," whether deciding to enter an industry or to begin an undertaking. However, this analysis is incomplete if leaders fail to consider the wider impact of the organization's actions on its own employees and on society. This course focuses on the problem of incorporating a wide variety of value perspectives into decision-making. Values-based leadership involves the ability to take the disparate value propositions of various stakeholders and integrate them into a coherent vision. We explore how recognizing and incorporating competing values claims throughout the organization is often facilitated and hindered by a number of psychological, organizational and cultural processes. Students will come to understand the variety of underlying mechanisms managers of organizations typically have at their disposal to successfully implement values objectives and select among different approaches, while anticipating the constraints placed on choice by the organization's market and non-market environments.
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