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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.
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
When in San Diego my alternative contacts are:
Department of Economics
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
USA
(858) 534-3452 office direct
(858) 534-3383 messages
(858) 534-7040 fax
electronic mail: vcrawford "at" ucsd.edu
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 (Oxford unless
noted otherwise; scroll down or jump to past courses)
- Minicourse on Behavioral
Game Theory 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?", forthcoming in Eminent Economists II-Their Life Philosophies,
editors Michael Szenberg and Lall Ramrattan, Cambridge
University Press.
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 (August 2011), 1912-1932. (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
Morén's March 29, 2007 Diario Medico article about the
proposal, "La flexibilidad salarial
del residente mejora su asignación 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 asignación 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)
- Lecture Series at the ECORE Summer School,
European Center for
Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics
(ECARES). Louvain-la-Neuve,
Belgium, 23-27 May 2011
- Undergraduate
Lectures on Behavioural and Experimental Game
Theory, University of Oxford, Department of
Economics, Hilary Term 2011
- Lectures at
the Becker-Friedman
Institute, University of Chicago,
28 February-5 March 2011
- First Tear MPhil
Lectures on Consumer and Producer Theory,
Uncertainty, and Experimental Economics,
University of Oxford, Department of
Economics, Michaelmas Term 2010
- Mini-Course on
Strategic Thinking, Paris School of
Economics, 17 - 19 May 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 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
17 August 2011.
Copyright © Vincent P.
Crawford, 2011. 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.