IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1802.09490.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Controlling Human Utilization of Failure-Prone Systems via Taxes

Author

Listed:
  • Ashish R. Hota
  • Shreyas Sundaram

Abstract

We consider a game-theoretic model where individuals compete over a shared failure-prone system or resource. We investigate the effectiveness of a taxation mechanism in controlling the utilization of the resource at the Nash equilibrium when the decision-makers have behavioral risk preferences, captured by prospect theory. We first observe that heterogeneous prospect-theoretic risk preferences can lead to counter-intuitive outcomes. In particular, for resources that exhibit network effects, utilization can increase under taxation and there may not exist a tax rate that achieves the socially optimal level of utilization. We identify conditions under which utilization is monotone and continuous, and then characterize the range of utilizations that can be achieved by a suitable choice of tax rate. We further show that resource utilization is higher when players are charged differentiated tax rates compared to the case when all players are charged an identical tax rate, under suitable assumptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashish R. Hota & Shreyas Sundaram, 2018. "Controlling Human Utilization of Failure-Prone Systems via Taxes," Papers 1802.09490, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1802.09490
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.09490
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nisan,Noam & Roughgarden,Tim & Tardos,Eva & Vazirani,Vijay V. (ed.), 2007. "Algorithmic Game Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521872829, September.
    2. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Ashish R. Hota & Siddharth Garg & Shreyas Sundaram, 2014. "Fragility of the Commons under Prospect-Theoretic Risk Attitudes," Papers 1408.5951, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2016.
    4. Efe A. Ok, 2007. "Preliminaries of Real Analysis, from Real Analysis with Economic Applications," Introductory Chapters, in: Real Analysis with Economic Applications, Princeton University Press.
    5. Hota, Ashish R. & Garg, Siddharth & Sundaram, Shreyas, 2016. "Fragility of the commons under prospect-theoretic risk attitudes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 135-164.
    6. Roughgarden, Tim & Schoppmann, Florian, 2015. "Local smoothness and the price of anarchy in splittable congestion games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 317-342.
    7. Sergey V. Buldyrev & Roni Parshani & Gerald Paul & H. Eugene Stanley & Shlomo Havlin, 2010. "Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks," Nature, Nature, vol. 464(7291), pages 1025-1028, April.
    8. Jason Delaney & Sarah Jacobson, 2016. "Payments or Persuasion: Common Pool Resource Management with Price and Non-price Measures," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 65(4), pages 747-772, December.
    9. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2013. "Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 173-196, Winter.
    10. Michael L. Katz & Carl Shapiro, 1994. "Systems Competition and Network Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 93-115, Spring.
    11. Walker, James M & Gardner, Roy, 1992. "Probabilistic Destruction of Common-Pool Resources: Experimental Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(414), pages 1149-1161, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christos Pelekis & Panagiotis Promponas & Juan Alvarado & Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou & Symeon Papavassiliou, 2021. "A fragile multi-CPR game," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 94(3), pages 461-492, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hota, Ashish R. & Garg, Siddharth & Sundaram, Shreyas, 2016. "Fragility of the commons under prospect-theoretic risk attitudes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 135-164.
    2. Christos Pelekis & Panagiotis Promponas & Juan Alvarado & Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou & Symeon Papavassiliou, 2021. "A fragile multi-CPR game," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 94(3), pages 461-492, December.
    3. Mustafa Abdallah & Parinaz Naghizadeh & Ashish R. Hota & Timothy Cason & Saurabh Bagchi & Shreyas Sundaram, 2020. "Behavioral and Game-Theoretic Security Investments in Interdependent Systems Modeled by Attack Graphs," Papers 2001.03213, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
    4. Ashish R. Hota & Shreyas Sundaram, 2017. "Game-Theoretic Vaccination Against Networked SIS Epidemics and Impacts of Human Decision-Making," Papers 1703.08750, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2019.
    5. Bier, Vicki & Gutfraind, Alexander, 2019. "Risk analysis beyond vulnerability and resilience – characterizing the defensibility of critical systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(2), pages 626-636.
    6. José F. Tudón M., 2019. "Perception, utility, and evolution," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 191-208, December.
    7. Shoshan, Vered & Hazan, Tamir & Plonsky, Ori, 2023. "BEAST-Net: Learning novel behavioral insights using a neural network adaptation of a behavioral model," OSF Preprints kaeny, Center for Open Science.
    8. Carolin Bock & Maximilian Schmidt, 2015. "Should I stay, or should I go? – How fund dynamics influence venture capital exit decisions," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(1), pages 68-82, November.
    9. Hong, Yan-Zhen & Su, Yi-Ju & Chang, Hung-Hao, 2023. "Analyzing the relationship between income and life satisfaction of Forest farm households - a behavioral economics approach," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    10. Fox, Stephen & Groesser, Stefan N., 2016. "Reframing the relevance of research to practice," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 457-465.
    11. Karagözoğlu, Emin & Keskin, Kerim, 2024. "Consideration sets and reference points in a dynamic bargaining game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 381-403.
    12. Felici, Marco & Kenny, Geoff & Friz, Roberta, 2023. "Consumer savings behaviour at low and negative interest rates," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    13. Klein, Martin & Deissenroth, Marc, 2017. "When do households invest in solar photovoltaics? An application of prospect theory," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 270-278.
    14. Dominika Czyz & Karolina Safarzynska, 2023. "Catastrophic Damages and the Optimal Carbon Tax Under Loss Aversion," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 85(2), pages 303-340, June.
    15. Alex Imas & Sally Sadoff & Anya Samek, 2017. "Do People Anticipate Loss Aversion?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1271-1284, May.
    16. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    17. Carpentier, A. & Reboud, X., 2018. "Why farmers consider pesticides the ultimate in crop protection: economic and behavioral insights," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277528, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    18. Bryce McLaughlin & Jann Spiess, 2022. "Algorithmic Assistance with Recommendation-Dependent Preferences," Papers 2208.07626, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    19. Mariya Burdina & Scott Hiller, 2021. "When Falling Just Short is a Good Thing: The Effect of Past Performance on Improvement," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(7), pages 777-798, October.
    20. Häckel, Björn & Pfosser, Stefan & Tränkler, Timm, 2017. "Explaining the energy efficiency gap - Expected Utility Theory versus Cumulative Prospect Theory," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 414-426.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1802.09490. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.