Antonio Penta, Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona acted as Opponent.

This doctoral dissertation "Experiments on Non-Strategic Behavior, Bargaining, and Social Norms" consists of three self-contained chapters:

Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis investigate systematic shifts in non-strategic individuals’ behavior as the salience of choices changes, through manipulations of the level and/or position of non-strategic features in two player normal-form games and four player ring games, respectively. It is necessary to carefully examine systematic changes in non-strategic behavior because, in addition to directly affecting the aggregate distribution of choices, they can also generate substantial indirect effects by influencing strategic individuals’ beliefs and best responses. The data in both chapters provide strong support for the claim that a significant proportion of participants — who are likely non-strategic — pay attention to non-strategic features of games and that their choices are affected by manipulations of these features.

Chapter 3 tests if exogenous manipulation of the production function used to generate a joint surplus affects participants’ bargaining behavior and thirdparty assessments of social norms on distribution. The manipulation varies the substitutability of participants’ inputs to joint production: in one group, contributions to the surplus are neatly separable (Substitutes), while in the other, they are not (Complements). The data show that manipulating substitutability has no statistically significant effect on bargaining outcomes. Average third-party assessments of social norms also do not differ significantly between the two groups.

"Experiments on Non-Strategic Behavior, Bargaining, and Social Norms"