Facing Loss: Reactions of Microeconomic Agents

The first part of the thesis is the paper “A Bank Competition Model with TBTF Subsidy”, develops a theoretical model which could offer some insights on the effects of a systemic subsidy on the competition dynamics among banks. In Chapter 1, there is the introduction to the work, with the research objective. In Chapter 2, there is the literature review on the subject. In Chapter 3, there is the description of the modelled economy and the agents. In Chapter 4, the static symmetric game case is developed. In Chapter 5, the static asymmetric game, with the subsidy, is developed and the Sub-game Perfect Nash Equilibria is found. In Chapter 6, the effects of the too-big-to-fail are analysed. In Chapter 7, conclusions are drawn. The second part of the thesis is the paper “Response Time under Gains and Losses”, which has investigated cognitive effort exercised by subjects in a variety of games - binary and continuous choices, in both the individual context and in the social one - taking response times as a proxy. Its main focus has been the difference in the level of cognitive effort between the loss and the gain domain. In Chapter 1, there is the introduction to the work and the research objective is stated. In Chapter 2, there is the literature review on the subject. In Chapter 3, there is the description of the experiment held in CESARE lab at LUISS Guido Carli university. In Chapter 4, there is the analysis of response times, with a particular emphasis on the role of the domain. In Chapter 5, conclusions are drawn.