VICTORY CELEBRATIONS AS THEATER: A DRAMATURGICAL APPROACH TO CROWD BEHAVIOR*

Drawing on data derived from a field study of victory celebrations, this paper suggests a dramaturgical approach to crowd behavior. Existing theories of crowd behavior are either contradicted by the field data or do not adequately account for the heterogeneity of activity observed, for the interaction between the various categories of participants, or for the shifts in the behavior of the participants and the resultant change in the character of the celebrations. Subsequent analysis indicates that the victory crowds are best understood from a dramaturgical standpoint. Several theoretical, conceptual, and research implications of a dramaturgical approach to crowd behavior are suggested and discussed. The paper concludes with an expanded conception of crowd behavior, one which emphasizes its spatial and temporal as well as interactional dimensions.     

On the intensity of downside risk aversion

The degree of downside risk aversion (or equivalently prudence) is so far usually measured by . We propose here another measure, , which has specific and interesting local and global properties. Some of these properties are to a wide extent similar to those of the classical measure of absolute risk aversion, which is not always the case for . It also appears that the two measures are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they seem to be rather complementary as shown through an economic application dealing with a simple general equilibrium model of savings.

Fairness and Contract Design

We show experimentally that fairness concerns may have a decisive impact on the actual and optimal choice of contracts in a moral hazard context. Bonus contracts that offer a voluntary and unenforceable bonus for satisfactory performance provide powerful incentives and are superior to explicit incentive contracts when there are some fair‐minded players, but trust contracts that pay a generous wage up front are less efficient than incentive contracts. The principals understand this and predominantly choose the bonus contracts. These results are consistent with recently developed theories of fairness, which offer important new insights into the interaction of contract choices, fairness, and incentives.