In this episode, our guest Florian Englmaier explores the effectiveness of monetary incentives in driving team efficiency and innovation. He shares insights from an experimental study conducted in an escape room setting, uncovering surprising findings about the impact of incentives on non-routine tasks and the emergence of leadership dynamics within teams. 

Florian Englmaier is professor of organisational economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. His main research interests lie in the fields of the economics of organisations and human resources, where he focuses on agency problems in organisations.

You can find the papers on his studies conducted in the escape room setting here and here.

In this episode we are talking to Chris Voss. He is a former FBI hostage negotiator and has written a bestselling book “Never split the difference”. We discuss with him, what we can learn from hostage negotiations about negotiations in other settings, especially in the business context. Chris shares his approaches to negotiations and compares the importance of “tactical empathy” with Game Theoretic approaches. He also gives concrete and tangible proposals on how the listeners can improve their negotiation skills.

Chris Voss is a former FBI lead hostage negotiator, and founder and CEO of The Black Swan Group, a company focused on negotiation skills trainings. He is author of the bestselling book “Never Split the Difference“.

In today’s episode, we discuss Game Theory in movies. Santiago shares in which movies the prisoner’s dilemma, the chicken game and other concepts are portrayed. The discussion brings us to many known movies, amongst them ‘The dark knight’, ‘A Beautiful Mind’, and many others. Below we have listed a list of links of the movie clips we discuss in this episode. Santiago also shares in the discussion which of them were successful in portraying Game Theory and which ones could have done a better job.

Santiago Sanchez-Pages is a Reader in Economics in the Department of Political Economy. His background is in economic theory, including bargaining, game theory and political economy, but one of his main research fields is also experimental economics. He has written a book on Economics in movies titled “The Representation of Economics in Cinema. Scarcity, Greed and Utopia”.

• L.A. Confidential (Prisoner’s dilemma): L.A. Confidential (3/10) Movie CLIP – The Interrogation (1997) HD
• The Dark Knight (Prisoner’s dilemma): Social experiment || Dark knight
• Rebel without a cause (chicken run): The Chicken Run: Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
• Footloose (Chicken run): Holding Out for a Hero  Bonnie Tyler Footloose
• A Beautiful Mind (Nash equilibrium – or lack thereof): A Beautiful Mind – Bar Scene John Nash’s Equilibrium Game Theory [1080p english full scene]
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Commitment): Doctor Strangelove – Doomsday Machine

In this episode, our guest Stefano DellaVigna shares his approach to answering research questions through various data sources, including lab experiments, natural experiments, and field experiments. We explore the significance of seeking out natural experiments and their value in enhancing our understanding of human behavior. Using examples such as the impact of violent movies on violence and changes in Fox News subscriptions, Stefano reveals surprising findings and their implications. We also discuss the availability of experimental data and the establishment of nudging units for research purposes.

Stefano DellaVigna is the Daniel Koshland, Sr., Distinguished Professor of Economics, Professor of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-director of the Berkeley Initiative for Behavioral Economics and Finance. His research interests are, among others, in the area of behavioral economics, applied microeconomics and media economics.

You can find his paper on the influence of movie violence on violent crime here and his paper on the “Fox News effect” here.

In this episode Tommaso Bondi shares his research on cultural markets with us. We take a deep dive into the insights he gained when studying online reviews and he explains to us why, counterintuitively, earning public recognition does not necessarily lead to higher ratings. A finding which, as we learn from Tommaso, is closely related to how well customer preferences and product match. Tommaso’s result does not only have theoretical merit but also seems to be observable in practice. We then also discuss the impact of experts on reviews and finally take a short detour to strategies of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Tommaso Bondi is Assistant Professor of Marketing and the Demir Sabanci Faculty Fellow of Marketing and Management at Cornell Tech and the SC Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. His research is mainly focused on economics of digitization, quantitative marketing, and behavioral and experimental economics.

You can find his papers “Alone, Together: A Model of Social (Mis)Learning from Consumer Reviews” and “The Good, The Bad and The Picky: Reference Dependence and the Reversal of Product Ratings” here and here.

In today’s episode, we explore one of the classics in Bargaining theory: The Rubinstein Bargaining Model. And we have found the perfect guest – who better to explain this bargaining model than its founder Ariel Rubinstein himself! Ariel not only shares how the idea of the model came to be, but he also comments on some results and critically discusses whether the Rubinstein Bargaining Model (and Game Theory in general) has predictive or normative power for real-life situations.

Ariel Rubinstein is Professor of Economics at the School of Economics at Tel Aviv University and the Department of Economics at New York University. His research is focused on Economic Theory, in particular Decision Theory and Game Theory.

You can download his books for free (also the book “Economic fables” mentioned in our episode) and check out his Atlas of Cafés on his website https://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/ .

There, you also find his original paper introducing what came to be know the “Rubinstein Bargaining Model”: “Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model”