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Securing Victory or Not? Surrendering Optimal Play when Facing Simple Calculations -A Natural Experiment from the Swedish and US Jeopardy

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  • Jenny Charlotta Säve-Söderbergh

    (Swedish Institute for Social Research - Stockholm University)

  • Gabriella Sjögren Lindquist

    (Swedish institute for Social Research - Stockholm University)

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the common assumption of economic agents' capabilities to process complex mathematical problems to find optimal strategies applied in economic modeling. By exploiting a design difference in the game show Jeopardy between the U.S. and Sweden we obtain a natural experiment of individuals facing an optimization decision either having explicit information or deriving it by non-complex adding and subtracting. Given the assumption that individuals compute optimally, there should be no difference in the strategies used. Yet, the results show that even a small change in informational pre-conditions for obtaining an optimal strategy strongly alters economic-decision making.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Charlotta Säve-Söderbergh & Gabriella Sjögren Lindquist, 2011. "Securing Victory or Not? Surrendering Optimal Play when Facing Simple Calculations -A Natural Experiment from the Swedish and US Jeopardy," Post-Print hal-00675398, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00675398
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2010.522525
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00675398
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    Cited by:

    1. Säve Söderberg, Jenny & Sjögren Lindquist, Gabriella, 2014. "Children do not behave like adults: Gender gaps in performance and risk taking," Working Paper Series 7/2013, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    2. Jenny Säve-Söderbergh & Gabriella Sjögren Lindquist, 2014. "Children Do Not Behave Like Adults: Gender Gaps in Performance and Risk Taking within a Random Social Context in the High-Stakes Game Shows Jeopardy and Junior Jeopardy," CESifo Working Paper Series 4595, CESifo.
    3. Haeussler, Carolin & Vieth, Sabrina, 2022. "A question worth a million: The expert, the crowd, or myself? An investigation of problem solving," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).

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