Dear All,

The Department of Economics invites you to their weekly seminar on Wednesday, February 19th, 2025.

Time: 1:40 PM to 2:50 PM

 Venue: AC04-301

 Speaker: Prof. Francis Bloch

 Title: True colors: Authenticity in Social and Economic Interactions

Abstract: This paper considers settings where individuals benefit from choosing the same behaviors as others but, due to difference in identities, backgrounds, or tastes, they can also suffer or incur costs to do so. The main concern is when the preferred action of the majority prevails. We find an equilibrium "tyranny of the majority" when the preferences of counterparts are not known; minority members who have low costs to do so adopt the majority-preferred action which creates additional incentives for higher cost minority member to adopt the majority action. In a game where agents can commit to an action, however, in one equilibrium the high cost minority agents do so and mitigate this effect. These equilibria emerge in a game where agents only care aligning actions with others, thus indicating the basic forces behind the prevalence of certain behaviors even when agents have no concern about their reputations.