APPLAUSE

 
By Tim Harford
Friday, May 18, 2007
 
 
Dear
Economist,

At the end of concerts the performers leave the stage to the sound of applause. I prefer to save my energy, especially when many of my fellow concert-goers are applauding on my behalf.

From a strictly economic viewpoint I believe that my behaviour is rational but why do others not behave as I do? Please do not fob me off with the explanation that the applause is thanks for an excellent performance.

I bought my ticket in the expectation of an excellent performance and the delivery of that is the performers living up to their side of the bargain.

Kind regards,

S.C. Li, via e-mail

Dear S.C. Li,

What can I say? People do not always behave rationally. Perhaps the trendy behavioural economists will strap audiences into brain scanners and produce an explanation; I do not know.

One thing of which we can be sure is that rational audiences do not applaud. The renowned economist Avinash Dixit, perhaps fearing that his students will be all-too-rational after his course of game theory, offers an incentive payment of $40 to the last person to stop clapping at the end of his lecture series.

Research by Jeremy Bulow and Paul Klemperer shows that in such circumstances, the rational strategy is for all but two to stop applauding almost immediately. As long as there are several others clapping, one extra clap is so unlikely to deliver you victory that you should give up before bothering to clap it. Only if just one opponent is clapping should you persist. Recently, however, six of Professor Dixit's students clapped for over two hours before agreeing to share the prize. Perhaps they did not understand his material after all.

鼓掌的经济学

 
作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家蒂姆•哈福德(Tim Harford)
2007年5月18日 星期五
 
 
亲爱的经济学家：

音乐会结束时，演奏者在掌声中退场。我却宁愿节省自己的力气，特别是当许多观众在代表我鼓掌时。

从严格的经济学观点来看，我认为我的行为是理性的，但为什么其他人不像我这样做？请不要用“鼓掌是为了感谢精彩的演出”这样的解释来糊弄我。

我买门票就是期待着一场精彩的演出，提供精彩表演是演奏者们的本份。

此致

S.C. Li，通过电子邮件
-------------------------------
亲爱的S.C. Li，

我能说什么呢？人们的行为并不总是理性的。或许趋势行为经济学家会强迫观众进行脑部扫描，然后得出解释；我不知道。

我们可以确定的一件事是，理性的观众不会鼓掌。著名经济学家阿维纳什•迪克西特(Avinash Dixit)或许是担心，在听过其博弈论课程后，他的学生会变得过于理性，因此决定向在他的讲座结束时最后一个停止鼓掌的学生提供40美元的奖金。

杰里米•布洛(Jeremy Bulow)和保罗•克伦佩雷尔(Paul Klemperer)的研究表明，在这种情况下，理性的策略是，除了两个人以外，所有人几乎都立刻停止鼓掌。只要还有其他几个人在鼓掌，多鼓一次掌就不太可能让你获胜，因此你根本就不应该鼓掌。只有在只有一个对手在鼓掌的情况下，你才应该坚持。不过最近，迪克西特教授的6个学生鼓掌超过了两个小时，最后同意由大家分享奖金。或许他们还是不明白他讲座的内容。