Games of strategy in culture and economics research

Maxwell Mkondiwa

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2020, vol. 27, issue 2, 146-163

Abstract: Games are meant to be fun, yet economists have successfully developed games that are less fun and less understood by participants especially in developing countries. This paper surveys failures in risk attitudes elicitation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and questions the use of complex research tools such as multiple price list (MPL) approaches and behavioral games that rural participants have never played before. The failures can be avoided by using innovative research tools that ingest local activities like indigenous board games that the rural people have played for generations because these games are entertaining and closely related to the economic decisions they make. I provide a description of a variant of the indigenous strategic games of Africa- Mancala- and suggest a research agenda that applies the game in economics research—for risk attitudes elicitation, improving math skills of children and behavioral game theory.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1350178X.2019.1680858 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:146-163

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJEC20

DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2019.1680858

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands

More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().