MALCOLM J. KASS
CONTACT INFORMATION – Fall 2015
College of Business – UTA
701 S. West Street
Arlington, Texas 76019
Phone: (952) 334-5041
Email: mkass@uta.edu
Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/kasshomepage/
EDUCATION
University of Texas at Dallas, Ph. D. in Economics, 2016 (expected).
University of Texas at Dallas, M. S. in Economics, 2012.
Southern Methodist University, Masters of Business Administration, May 2008.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, B. S. E. in Chemical Engineering, May 1998.
FIELDS
PRIMARY: Microeconomics
SECONDARY: Behavioral/Experimental Economics
DISSERTATION
“Three Essays on Conflict and Conflict Resolution between Organizations”
COMMITTEE:
Professor Daniel G. Arce M. (University of Texas at Dallas , Co-Chair),
Professor Catherine C. Eckel (Texas A&M University, Co-Chair),
Professor Sherry (Xin) Li (University of Texas at Dallas),
Professor Ernan E. Haruvy (University of Texas at Dallas).
PUBLICATIONS
“The UN in the Lab” (Malcolm Kass, Enrique Fatas, Catherine C. Eckel, and Daniel G.
Arce M.) Social Choice and Welfare, Vol. 45: Issue 3, October 2015, 625-651.
“Counterterrorism Strategies in the Lab”, (Daniel G. Arce M., Sneha Bakshi, Rachel T.
A. Croson, Catherine C. Eckel, Enrique Fatas, Malcolm Kass) [Special Issue] Public
Choice, Vol. 149, Issue 3-4, December 2011: 465-478.
WORKING
PAPERS
“Sacrifice: An experiment on the political economy of extreme intergroup punishment”
with Drs. Catherine Eckel and Enrique Fatas
“Limits to the Prosocial effect from Endogenous Institution Selection” (lone author)
CURRENT
PROJECTS
“Generalized Setting for the Generalized Preemption-Deterrence Game” (with Dr.
Daniel Arce)
“Immigrant Willingness to Transmit Urban Migration Myths ” (with Dr. Natalia
Candelo-Londono)
EMPLOYMENT
Visiting Assistant Professor (August 2014 – Present)
Department of Economics, University of Texas at Arlington
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Graduate Econometrics (Fall 2014 to current)
Economics of Sports (Fall 2014 to current)
Graduate Economics of Sports (Fall 2014 to current)
Undergraduate Econometrics (Fall 2015)
Principles of Micro Economics (Spring 2015)
Mathematical Economics (Fall 2012 and Spring 2013)
2014 Seminar Series at CUNY, Queens College
INVITED
PRESENTATIONS
2015 Southern Economic Association, New Orleans.
CONFERENCE
PRESENTATIONS 2014 Southern Economic Association, Atlanta.
2014 Texas Experimental Association Symposium
2014 Seminar Series at CUNY, Queens College
2013 Southern Economic Association, Tampa.
2013 Economic Science Association North American Meetings, Santa Cruz.
2013 Economic Science Association World Meetings, Zurich.
AWARDS AND
HONORS
Shukla Graduate Fellowship (2012), UT Dallas
Beta Gamma Sigma (2008), Southern Methodist University
REFERENCES
Professor Daniel G. Arce M. (co-chair), University of Texas at Dallas.
(972) 883-6857
darce@utdallas.edu
Professor Catherine C. Eckel (co-chair), Texas A&M University.
(979) 845-8506
ceckel@econmail.tamu.edu
Professor Roger Meiners, University of Texas at Arlington
(817) 272-3116
meiners@uta.edu
Dissertation Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: The UN in the Lab (with Drs. Enrique Fatas, Catherine C. Eckel, and Daniel G. Arce M.)
We consider two alternatives to inaction for governments combating terrorism, which we term Defense and
Prevention. Defense consists of investing in resources that reduce the impact of an attack, and generates a negative
externality to other governments, making their countries a more attractive objective for terrorists. In contrast, Prevention,
which consists of investing in resources that reduce the ability of the terrorist organization to mount an attack, creates a
positive externality by reducing the overall threat of terrorism for all. This interaction is captured using a simple 3x3
“Nested Prisoner’s Dilemma” game, with a single Nash equilibrium where both countries choose Defense. Due to the
structure of this interaction, countries can benefit from coordination of policy choices, and international institutions (such
as the UN) can be utilized to facilitate coordination by implementing agreements to share the cost of Prevention. We
introduce an institution that implements a cost sharing policy for Prevention, and investigate experimentally whether
subjects coordinate on a cooperative strategy more frequently under different levels of cost sharing. In all treatments, cost
sharing leaves the Prisoner’s Dilemma structure and Nash equilibrium of the game unchanged. We compare three levels of
cost sharing to a baseline in a between-subjects design, and find that cost sharing generates a non-linear effect on the choice
of the efficient Prevention strategy and overall performance. Only an institution supporting a high level of mandatory cost
sharing generates a significant improvement in the use of the Prevention strategy.
Chapter 2: Limits to the Prosocial effect from Endogenous Institution Selection
There is a small but growing strand of research on the pro-social effects of democracy. In these studies, subjects select an
institution in which they interact using a collective choice mechanism such as voting. Typically subjects choose among
formal or informal punishment, communication, or commitment institutions in a baseline social dilemma structure, and the
results point to greater cooperation when these institutions are endogenously selected. This led to the idea that this social
welfare-enhancing effect of democracy will only be effective when the subject’s choice set includes institutions that serve
to align personal and group incentives. However, most of the literature uses institutions that alter the equilibrium
predictions, expand the sequential game decision tree by adding subgames, and/or alter the aggregate welfare for a given
outcome for the interacting group/pair. This paper avoids these potential confounds and is a direct test of the social welfareenhancing effect of democracy with institutions designed to lessen, but not completely alleviate, the friction between
personal and group incentives. Testing a finitely repeated PD setting, there is weak evidence that the endogenous selection
of the cost sharing level drives pro-social behavior. However, in a one-shot NPD setting, I find that subjects behave
considerably less pro-socially when a given institution is endogenously chosen rather than exogenously imposed. In the
one-shot NPD setting, 72.2% of subject pairs that mutually selected cost sharing institutions contained individuals that
appeared to use the collective choice mechanism to encourage their counterparts to cooperate, but defected themselves.
Only 42.6% of subject pairs in the imposed settings acted similarly. This supports the notion forwarded by the previous
literature that the social welfare-enhancing effect of democracy is dependent on institutions that serve to align personal and
group incentives. Additionally, this paper provides a key warning that the pro-social effect of democracy may not only be
dependent on the available institutional options, but on the collective choice mechanism itself.
Chapter 3: Sacrifice: An experiment on the political economy of extreme intergroup punishment
We analyze the behavioral determinants of extreme punishment in intergroup conflict. Individuals contribute to team
production by a tedious real effort task where time in a key input for production. Teams compete for a prize in asymmetric
tournaments where the value of the prize is endogenously determined. Asymmetries in real effort task times are generated
by nature or by the decisions of one team, arbitrarily chosen. As the magnitude of the asymmetry is identical across
conditions, we can measure the marginal effect of political inequality when only the advantaged group votes on the
asymmetry size. We allow for a particular form of intergroup punishment. Individuals in the disadvantaged group may
punish all individuals in the other team at an extreme price: if they decide to punish the other individuals, they lose all their
individual earnings. Our results strongly support the link between political asymmetries and extreme intergroup punishment.
Relative to a control treatment with no asymmetries, economic inequality has no significant effect on the likelihood of
intergroup punishment. Interestingly in the political inequality treatment, we find that skilled individuals are more likely to
sacrifice themselves to harm the other team when they are members of the politically disadvantaged group. These findings
hinder aggregate welfare for the introduction of political inequality itself leads to an estimated 20% drop in aggregate
earnings, ceteris paribus.