Jeffrey Zeidel

Postdoctoral Associate, NYU Abu Dhabi

Hello! I am a Postdoctoral Associate at New York University Abu Dhabi, in the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design. My work is primarily in behavioral and experimental economics, game theory, and microeconomic theory. I use experimental data to test and build better models of economic decision making.

Job Market Paper

Luck and Learning in Games.

(with John Wooders)

Abstract: In strategic environments, actions and luck often combine to determine outcomes. We conduct a laboratory experiment with a unique mixed strategy nash game in which (i) realized payoffs depend on both actions and luck, and (ii) players observe actions and luck separately. There is no reason for players to react to luck since it provides no information about either their opponent’s future actions or the future realizations of luck. We find, however, that subjects reinforce on luck. Specifically, a subject is more likely to choose the same action again if either it was ex-post optimal given his opponent’s action or, though suboptimal, resulted in a favorable payoff due to luck. These reinforcement effects are sub-additive. We estimate and compare several models of learning.