This paper investigates the structure of the payment card market, with consumers and merchants basing their subscription decisions on different information sets. We find that the market structure depends crucially on ...This paper investigates the structure of the payment card market, with consumers and merchants basing their subscription decisions on different information sets. We find that the market structure depends crucially on the information set on which consumers and merchants base their subscription decisions. In the studied case, we observe that a market with few cards dominating only emerges when decisions are based on very limited information. Under the same conditions using a complete information set, all cards survive in the long run. The use of an agent-based model, focusing on the interactions between merchants and consumers, as a basis for subscription decisions allows us to investigate the dynamics of the market and the effect of the indirect network externalities rather than investigating only equilibrium outcomes.展开更多
Rationality is a fundamental concept in economics. Most researchers will accept that human beings are not fully rational. Herbert Simon suggested that we are ＂bounded rational＂. However, it is very difficult to quan...Rationality is a fundamental concept in economics. Most researchers will accept that human beings are not fully rational. Herbert Simon suggested that we are ＂bounded rational＂. However, it is very difficult to quantify ＂bounded rationality＂, and therefore it is difficult to pinpoint its impact to all those economic theories that depend on the assumption of full rationality. Ariel Rubinstein proposed to model bounded rationality by explicitly specifying the decision makers＇ decision-making procedures. This paper takes a computational point of view to Rubinstein＇s approach. From a computational point of view, decision procedures can be encoded in algorithms and heuristics. We argue that, everything else being equal, the effective rationality of an agent is determined by its computational power - we refer to this as the computational intelligence determines effective rationality （CIDER） theory. This is not an attempt to propose a unifying definition of bounded rationality. It is merely a proposal of a computational point of view of bounded rationality. This way of interpreting bounded rationality enables us to （computationally） reason about economic systems when the full rationality assumption is relaxed.展开更多
文摘This paper investigates the structure of the payment card market, with consumers and merchants basing their subscription decisions on different information sets. We find that the market structure depends crucially on the information set on which consumers and merchants base their subscription decisions. In the studied case, we observe that a market with few cards dominating only emerges when decisions are based on very limited information. Under the same conditions using a complete information set, all cards survive in the long run. The use of an agent-based model, focusing on the interactions between merchants and consumers, as a basis for subscription decisions allows us to investigate the dynamics of the market and the effect of the indirect network externalities rather than investigating only equilibrium outcomes.
文摘Rationality is a fundamental concept in economics. Most researchers will accept that human beings are not fully rational. Herbert Simon suggested that we are ＂bounded rational＂. However, it is very difficult to quantify ＂bounded rationality＂, and therefore it is difficult to pinpoint its impact to all those economic theories that depend on the assumption of full rationality. Ariel Rubinstein proposed to model bounded rationality by explicitly specifying the decision makers＇ decision-making procedures. This paper takes a computational point of view to Rubinstein＇s approach. From a computational point of view, decision procedures can be encoded in algorithms and heuristics. We argue that, everything else being equal, the effective rationality of an agent is determined by its computational power - we refer to this as the computational intelligence determines effective rationality （CIDER） theory. This is not an attempt to propose a unifying definition of bounded rationality. It is merely a proposal of a computational point of view of bounded rationality. This way of interpreting bounded rationality enables us to （computationally） reason about economic systems when the full rationality assumption is relaxed.
