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VINCENT P.
CRAWFORD
My primary positions are Drummond Professor of
Political Economy, Department of Economics, University of
Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College.
I am also Distinguished Professor Emeritus and
Research Professor in the Department of Economics, University of
California, San Diego, residence dates posted here.
Email
will continue to be monitored in all three places.
My main
contacts are:
Manor
Road
44-1865-271089
messages
44-1865-271094
fax
electronic mail: vincent.crawford "at"
economics.ox.ac.uk
44-1865-279339
study direct
44-1865-279379
messages (lodge)
44-1865-279299
fax
electronic mail: vincent.crawford "at" all-souls.ox.ac.uk
home
page: http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=269
My main alternative contacts are:
Department
of Economics
University of
California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
(858) 534-3452 office direct
(858) 534-3383 messages
(858) 534-7040 fax
electronic
mail: v2crawford "at" dssmail.ucsd.edu
home
page: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~vcrawfor/
2003 photo
by Zoe Crawford
Photos from the 2003 Induction Ceremony of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1999 photos by Dorothy Hahn
Current-year courses (click on links
below to go to course pages with course materials; scroll down or jump to past courses)
- Second Year Advanced Microeconomics Lectures on Behavioural Economics, University of
Oxford, Department of Economics, Hilary Term
2011
- Undergraduate Lectures on Behavioural
and Experimental Game Theory, University of Oxford, Department
of Economics, Hilary Term 2011
- Lectures
at the Milton
Friedman Institute,
- Lecture Series at the ECORE
Summer School,
- Lecture
Series at the Asia Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics,
Papers (scroll down or jump to interviews and presentations; jump to older downloadable papers)
Autobiographical
fiction
"Gray Eminence?", in Eminent
Economists II-Their Life Philosophies, editors Michael Szenberg
and Lall Ramrattan,
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. To be posted.
Behavioral
labor economics
Vincent P. Crawford and Juanjuan Meng, "New York City Cabdrivers' Labor Supply
Revisited: Reference-Dependent Preferences with Rational-Expectations Targets
for Hours and Income," American
Economic Review 101 (December 2011), in press. Better version of Figure 1. (Final version, June 2010.)
Lecture Slides, November 2010; Lecture Slides, July 2009; Previous Version, 9 March 2010, Previous version, 16 July 2009; Original version of paper, 23 July
2008; Original version of Lecture Slides, 23
July 2008
Behavioral
and experimental game theory
Abstract: Most applications of game theory assume
equilibrium, justified by presuming that learning will have converged to one;
or in settings where that is implausible, that equilibrium approximates people�s
strategic thinking without learning. Yet recent experimental work suggests that
initial responses to many kinds of games deviate
systematically from equilibrium, and that certain nonequilibrium
models can then out-predict equilibrium models of thinking. Even when learning
converges to equilibrium, such nonequilibrium models
of initial responses allow better prediction of history-dependent limiting
outcomes. This paper reviews recent theoretical and empirical work on nonequilibrium models of strategic thinking and illustrates
their applications in economics.
Miguel A. Costa-Gomes,
Vincent P. Crawford, and Nagore Iriberri,
"Comparing Models of Strategic Thinking in Van
Huyck, Battalio, and Beil's Coordination Games," Journal
of the European Economic Association 7 (2009), 365-376.
Web
appendix: "Limiting LQRE as a Model of Limiting Outcomes in
Van Huyck, Battalio, and Beil�s
Coordination Games"
Vincent P. Crawford, Tamar Kugler,
Zvika Neeman, and Ady Pauzner, "Behaviorally Optimal Auction Design: An Example
and Some Observations," Journal of the European
Economic Association 7 (2009), 377-387.
Vincent Crawford, Uri Gneezy,
and Yuval Rottenstreich, "The Power of Focal Points is Limited: Even
Minute Payoff Asymmetry May Yield Large Coordination Failures,"
American Economic Review 98 (2008), 1443-1458; Web Appendix (pdf)
Vincent P. Crawford, Preliminary version of "Let's Talk It Over: Coordination Via Preplay Communication With
Level-k Thinking" and Lecture Slides, plenary lecture at
the 26th Arne Ryde Symposium,"Communication
in Games and Experiments," 24-25 August 2007,
Vincent P. Crawford and Nagore
Iriberri, "Level-k Auctions: Can a
Non-Equilibrium Model of Strategic Thinking Explain the Winner's Curse and
Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions?," Econometrica 75 (November 2007), 1721-1770; Final version of Web Appendix with detailed
calculations and other supporting materials; Lecture slides (ppt)
Reference (without screen credit, and with no real
appreciation of the importance of level-k thinking...) on 2005 episode of the
CBS series Numb3rs, "Assassin," first aired 10/21/2005 (courtesy of William
Nguyen Phan; YouTube
Clip; Text; Moriarti
Comment)
Charlie: Hide and seek.
Don: What are you talking about, like the kids'
version?
Charlie: A mathematical approach to it, yes. See, the
assassin must hide in order to accomplish his goal, we
must seek and find the assassin before he achieves that goal.
Megan: Ah, behavioral game theory, yeah, we studied
this at
Charlie: I doubt you studied it the way that
Rubinstein, Tversky and Heller studied two person
constant sum hide and seek with unique mixed strategy equilibria.
Megan: No, not quite that way.
Don: Just bear with him.
Thoughts on Hide and Seek games played on naturally occuring "landscapes" from Edgar Allan Poe's The
Purloined Letter (complete story)
General principles:
"�But he
perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and
many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew
one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even
and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played
with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands
of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the
guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the
marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this
lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the
astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant
simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they
even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second
trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon
the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have
them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd'; --he guesses odd, and
wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned
thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the
second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation
from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will
suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon
putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even' guesses even, and wins.
Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed 'lucky,'
--what, in its last analysis, is it?"
"It is merely," I said, "an
identification of the reasoner's intellect with that
of his opponent."
(glossary: "arrant
simpleton" = L1 (conditional on shared history, which makes one choice
focal in a way that would attract L0); "simpleton a degree above the
first" = L2; boy with all the marbles = L2 or L3, depending on his
assessment of how simple his opponent is)
Specific application:
"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the
room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling
by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the
mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or
six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and
crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle --as if a design, in the
first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or
stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very
conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D--, the
minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously,
into one of the upper divisions of the rack.
"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I
concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all
appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us
so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D--
cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S-- family.
Here, the address, to the Minister, was diminutive and feminine; there the
superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided;
the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the
dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true
methodical habits of D--, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder
into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with
the hyperobtrusive situation of this document, full
in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the
conclusions to which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, were
strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to
suspect."
Lecture Slides,
Berkeley Psychology and Economics Seminar, 6 March 2007, and the Barcelona JOCS
Seminar, 26 March 2007; focusing on cognitive and experimental issues; earlier
version of Lecture Slides, Chicago, 2007, AEA Meetings; focusing on cognitive
and experimental issues
Lecture Slides,
Workshop on Econometrics and Experimental Economics,
Lecture Slides,
"Studying Strategic Thinking by Monitoring Search for Hidden Payoff
Information and Interpreting the Data in the Light of Algorithms that Link
Cognition, Search, and Decisions," NSF Workshop on "Behavior,
Computation, and Networks in Human Subject Experimentation," Del Mar,
California, July 31-August 1, 2008
Lecture Slides, Cemmap/ELSE Workshop on "Experimental Analysis of
Procedural Rationality in Games and Decisions,"
Lecture Slides,
"Studying Strategic Thinking Experimentally by Monitoring Search for
Hidden Payoff Information," Behavioral, Social and Computer Sciences
Seminar, Calit2, University of
Vincent P.
Crawford, "Look-ups
as the Windows of the Strategic Soul: Studying Cognition via Information Search
in Game Experiments" (based on joint
work with Miguel A. Costa-Gomes and Bruno Broseta), in Andrew Caplin
and Andrew Schotter, editors, Perspectives on the
Future of Economics: Positive and Normative Foundations, Volume 1 in the
series Handbooks of Economic Methodologies, Oxford University Press,
2008
Lecture Slides presented at the
Conference on the Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics,
Miguel A.
Costa-Gomes and Vincent P. Crawford, "Cognition
and Behavior in Two-Person Guessing Games: An Experimental Study,"
American Economic Review 96 (December 2006), 1737-1768; Web Appendix (zip) (A. Instructions
for Baseline and Robot/Trained Subjects Treatments; B. Description of Pilots;
C. Preliminary Statistical Tests; D. Figures Showing Subjects' Aggregate Guess
Distributions, Game by Game; E. Subjects' Guess and Look-up Data; F.
Specification Tests and Analysis of Clusters; G. Supplementary Tables; H.
Analysis of Search); Data Appendix (zip); Lecture slides (ppt)
Old Appendix I. Selected Subjects' Information
Searches and Types' Search Implications
Figures showing aggregate frequency
distributions of guesses game by game (with games identified by the codes from
Table 2):
2A-B, 2C-D, 2E-F, 2G-H, 2I-J, 2K-L, 2M-N, 2O-P
Sara
Robinson extensively discusses this paper in her article, "How Real People Think in Strategic Games,"
in the January/February 2004 issue of SIAM News.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Lying for Strategic Advantage: Rational and Boundedly Rational Misrepresentation of Intentions,"
American Economic Review 93 (March 2003), 133-149; Lecture slides
"The truth deserves a bodyguard of lies." --
Winston Churchill, Teheran, 1943
"The threat reporting that we received in the Spring and Summer of 2001 was not specific as to time, nor
place, nor manner of attack. Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaida
activities outside the
Let me read you some of the actual chatter that we
picked up that Spring and Summer:
� 'Unbelievable news in coming
weeks'
� 'Big event ... there will be a
very, very, very, very big uproar'
� 'There will be attacks in the near
future'
Troubling, yes. But
they don�t
tell us when; they don�t
tell us where; they don�t
tell us who; and they don�t
tell us how."
-- Condoleeza Rice, Opening
Remarks to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the
My question for Rice, Bush, Cheney, and
Rumsfeld: If Al-Quaeda had sent you a message
saying "We're going to hijack airplanes and crash them into the World
Trade Center--the one in New York City--on September 11--this coming September
11", would you have believed them?
Vincent P. Crawford, "Introduction to Experimental Game Theory"
(Symposium issue), Journal of Economic Theory 104 (May 2002), 1-15.
Miguel Costa-Gomes, Vincent Crawford, and Bruno Broseta, "Cognition and Behavior in Normal-Form Games: An Experimental Study," Econometrica 69 (September 2001)), 1193-1235; Correction of minor typos in Table 2 of published
version (p.1216)
Preliminary version (UCSD Discussion Paper
98-22, includes appendices)
extensively revised version plus Appendix A (UCSD Discussion Paper
2000-02R)
Vincent P. Crawford, "Learning
Dynamics, Lock-in, and Equilibrium Selection in Experimental Coordination
Games," in Ugo Pagano and Antonio Nicita,
editors, The Evolution of Economic Diversity (papers from Workshop X,
International School of Economic Research, University of Siena), London and New
York: Routledge, 2001, 133-163; Lecture slides
Readers
(and potential Routledge authors) should note that Routledge eliminated crucial parts of Figure 6.2(b), making
it meaningless. There should be a closed dot at (2,0)
and an open dot at (0,0), as in the UCSD
Discussion Paper 97-19 version linked above. Potential
authors: Routledge also doesn�t give you even the
opportunity to buy reprints.
Vincent P. Crawford and Bruno Broseta,
"What Price Coordination?The Efficiency-enhancing Effect of Auctioning the
Right to Play," American
Economic Review 88 (March 1998), 198-225.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Theory and Experiment in the Analysis of
Strategic Interaction," in David Kreps and Ken Wallis,
editors, Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Applications,
Seventh World Congress, Vol. I, Econometric Society Monographs No. 27,
Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 206-242; reprinted with minor changes and additions
in Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein,
and Matthew Rabin, editors, Advances in Behavioral Economics, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, 344-373.
Vincent P. Crawford, "A Survey of Experiments on Communication via Cheap
Talk," Journal of Economic Theory 78 (February
1998), 286-298.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Adaptive Dynamics in Coordination Games,"
Econometrica 63 (January 1995),
103-143.
Vincent P. Crawford, "An 'Evolutionary' Interpretation of Van Huyck,
Battalio, and Beil's
Experimental Results on Coordination," Games and
Economic Behavior 3 (February 1991), 25-59.
Vincent P.
Crawford, "Explicit Communication and Bargaining
Outcomes," American Economic Review Papers and
Proceedings 80 (May 1990), 213-219.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Equilibrium without Independence," Journal
of Economic Theory 50 (February 1990), 127-154.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Learning and Mixed-Strategy Equilibria
in Evolutionary Games," Journal of Theoretical
Biology 140 (23 October 1989), 537-550.
Matching Markets
Vincent P. Crawford, "The
Flexible-Salary Match: A Proposal to Increase the Salary Flexibility of the
National Resident Matching Program," Journal of
Economic Behavior and Organization 66 (2008), 149-160.
Sara Robinson's August 24, 2004 New
York Times article about the proposal, "Tweaking
the Math to Make Happier Medical Marriages" and the graphic
published with the article.
Patricia
Mor�n's
March 29, 2007 Diario Medico article about the
proposal, "La flexibilidad salarial del residente mejora su asignaci�n a distintos centros".
Vincent P. Crawford and Elsie Marie Knoer, "Job Matching with Heterogeneous Firms and
Workers," Econometrica
49 (March 1981), 437-450.
Alexander S. Kelso, Jr., and Vincent P.
Crawford, "Job Matching, Coalition Formation, and Gross
Substitutes," Econometrica
50 (November 1982), 1483-1504.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Comparative Statics in Matching Markets,"
Journal of Economic Theory 54 (August 1991), 389-400.
Miscellany
Vincent
P. Crawford and Ping-Sing Kuo, "A Dual Dutch Auction in
Taipei: The Choice of Numeraire and Auction Form in
Multi-Object Auctions with Bundling," Journal of
Economic Behavior and Organization 52 (August 2003), 427-442; Lecture slides.
"The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Stuffiness" or
"Who is Gerard Wanrooy and why did he (and his
boss at Elsevier, Joop Dirkmaat),
overriding JEBO editor Barkley Rosser's decision, refuse to publish one
of these photographs in the article or to post them as accompanying materials
linked on JEBO's website; and why did they try even to refuse us the
right to publish a link in JEBO to the photographs posted on this
website?"
Vincent Crawford, "John Nash and the Analysis of Strategic
Behavior," Economics Letters 75 (May 2002),
377-382; UCSD Discussion Paper 2000-03;
reprinted in Greek translation, with minor changes, as "O John Nash και η ανάλυση της
στρατηγικής συμπεριφοράς,"
in Θεωρια Παιγνιων: Αφιερωμα στον John Nash (Game
Theory: A Festschrift in Honor of John Nash), Constantina
Kottaridi and Gregorios Siourounis, editors, Athens: Eurasia Publications, 2002.
Vincent P Crawford, "Review
of Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge by Michael Suk-Young Chwe,"
Journal of Economic Literature 40 (June 2002), 577-578; html.
Vincent P. Crawford, "Review of Games of Strategy by Avinash Dixit and Susan Skeath,"
Journal of Economic Literature 39 (September 2001), 904-905; html.
Interviews, press, and presentation slides that
do not go with completed papers
Vox, Center for Economic Policy Research, August 2008 interview by Romesh Vaitilingam on "Behavioural game theory: how real people think in strategic interactions
" (audio only)"Συνέντευξη του Διακεκριμένου Καθηγητή του Πανεπιστημίου
της Καλιφόρνια, Σαν Ντιέγκο, Professor Vincent P.
Crawford: Στο εργαστήριο μαθαίνουμε πώς λαμβάνονται οι αποφάσεις," Εφημερίδα ΤA ΝΕΑ
15/03/2005, ειδικό ένθετο
MBA Ανοιχτό: ("Interview of Distinguished
Professor at the University of California, San Diego, Professor Vincent P.
Crawford: In the Laboratory We Learn How Decisions are Made", in the
special inset "MBA Open" of the Greek newspaper "The News,"
15 March 2005 (interviewed by Constantina Kottaridi (Lecturer in Economics, University of
Peloponnese) (html archive link in Greek; doc in English
Informal
talk on "Strategies for Getting Papers Published in
Journals" (audio only, hard to hear), National
Dong Hwa University,
Sara Robinson's August
24, 2004 New York Times article about the proposal, "Tweaking
the Math to Make Happier Medical Marriages" and the graphic
published with the article, discussing:
Vincent P. Crawford, "The
Flexible-Salary Match: A Proposal to Increase the Salary Flexibility of the
National Resident Matching Program," Journal of Economic
Behavior and Organization 66 (2008), 149-160.
Sara Robinson's articles
on matching markets in the April 2003 and July 2003 issues of SIAM News,
discussing:
Vincent P. Crawford and Elsie Marie Knoer, "Job Matching with Heterogeneous Firms and
Workers," Econometrica
49 (March 1981), 437-450.
Alexander S. Kelso, Jr., and Vincent P.
Crawford, "Job Matching, Coalition Formation, and Gross
Substitutes," Econometrica
50 (November 1982), 1483-1504.
Sara Robinson�s
article, "How Real People Think in Strategic Games,"
in the January/February 2004 issue of SIAM News, discussing
Miguel A. Costa-Gomes and Vincent P. Crawford, "Cognition
and Behavior in Two-Person Guessing Games: An Experimental Study,"
American Economic Review 96 (December 2006), 1737-1768.
Patricia Moren's 29
March 2007 Diario Medico article about
the �Flexible Salary Match proposal, "La flexibilidad salarial del residente mejora su asignaci�n a distintos centros".
Discussion of Crawford-Sobel 1982 Econometrica
paper "Strategic Information Transmission"
by Jeff Ely on 1 May 2009 on Sandeep Baliga's and Jeff Ely's blog Cheap
Talk.
Link to Crawford-Sobel
1982 Econometrica paper "Strategic
Information Transmission" in 15 June 2009 guest column by Justin Wolfers
on Freakonomics blog (link is
at "cheap talk" at the very end).
Vincent
Crawford, "Modeling Behavior in Novel Strategic Situations
via Level-k Thinking," slides for lecture presented
in the Marketing Seminar, Haas School of Business, University of California,
Berkeley, 3 April 2008; the Applied Micro Theory Workshop, University of
Pennsylvania, 28 April 2008; and as a �semi-plenary� lecture at GAMES
2008, Third World Congress of the Game Theory Society, 14 July 2008.
Vincent P.
Crawford, "Level-k Thinking,"
slides for plenary lecture presented at the 2007 North American Meeting of the
Economic Science Association,
Vincent P. Crawford, Lecture Slides for "Outguessing and Deception in Novel Strategic
Situations," SESS Distinguished Lecture, Singapore
Management University, November 2004; Lecture Slides for version presented at Northwestern
University, October 2005.
Past
Courses (at UCSD unless otherwise noted; only most recent year is shown for
undergraduate courses)
- Mini-Course on Strategic Thinking,
Paris School of Economics, 17 - 19
May 2010
- Mini-Course
on Behavioral Game Theory, part of the National University of Singapore
Behavioral Economics Summer Institute (other segments taught by Matthew
Rabin, Ted O'Donoghue,
and Terrance Odean), 26 July - 6 August 2010:
Lectures Slides on Introduction to Behavioral Game
Theory (pdf)
Lecture Slides on Strategic Thinking
(pdf)
Lecture Slides on Learning (pdf)
- Economics 200C, Games and
Information (second half; co-taught with Joel Sobel),
Spring 2009
- Economics
201C, Behavioral Game Theory (first half, co-taught with Joel Sobel), Spring 2009
- Master
Class on "Structural Nonequilibrium Models
of Strategic Thinking: Theory, Measurement, and Applications", Center
for Microdata Methods and Practice (Cemmap),
- Economics 142, Behavioral Economics, Winter 2008
- Economics 172A, Introduction to Operations
Research, Winter 2008
- Economics
284-5, Third Year Original Paper (co-taught with Marjorie Flavin), Winter and Spring 2007
- Economics
206, Decisions,
Winter 2007
- Economics
208, Games and Information (co-taught with Navin
Kartik and David Miller), Fall 2006
- Economics 191AB, Senior Honors Essay, Winter and Spring 2006
- Graduate Course on Microeconomics (co-taught with Fali Huang), August-September 2005,
- Mini-Course on Strategic
- Mini-Course
on Behavioral Game Theory, Stockholm School of Economics, 24-27 August 2004 (no online
materials)
- Mini-Course
on Behavioral Game Theory,
- Economics 208, Games and Information: Behavioral
Game Theory, Winter 2004
- Economics
200C, Games and Information, Spring 2003�
- UC
Berkeley Economics
209A, Theory and Application of Non-cooperative Games, Part II, Spring
2003
- Economics
207, Experimental Economics, Winter 2002
- Economics 109, Game Theory, Spring
2002
- Economics 172B, Introduction to Operations
Research, Winter 2002 (some linked materials no longer
available online)
- Economics 201C, Behavioral Game Theory, Spring
2001 (syllabus only)
- Economics 201A, Behavioral Game Theory, Fall 1997
(syllabus
only)
Great-great-great-great-uncle Bill (William Harris Crawford, 1772-1834)
Last modified 30 December 2010.
Copyright � Vincent P. Crawford, 2010. All federal and state
copyrights reserved for all original material presented on this site, or in the
courses it refers to, through any medium, including lecture or print.
