Amnon Rapoport (1936-2022)

 Amnon Rapoport, a pioneer of experimental game theory, has died. 

Here's a brief obituary:

Amnon Rapoport, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Management and Organizations at the University of Arizona, passed away on December 6th

I don't find his date of birth on the web, but in August of 1996 I participated in a conference in honor of his 60th birthday, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he had both studied and taught in the Department of Psychology.  Amnon had already had several heart attacks by then, and his students, who loved him, thought it prudent to have a celebration of his work at that relatively young age, but that caution proved unnecessary. 

Here's the volume of papers presented at that conference, edited by three of his students:

Budescu, David V., Ido Erev, and Rami Zwick, eds. Games and human behavior: Essays in honor of Amnon Rapoport. Erlbaum, 1999.

I first learned of his work when, as a grad student, I took a course in game theory taught by Michael Maschler, who told us about Amnon's experiments on the bargaining set.

He was a man ahead of his time, and maybe situated in the wrong discipline.  It seemed to him natural that psychologists should take a leading role in the experimental study of game theory, and he noted with some regret that instead that literature had been ceded to economists. Here's a paragraph from the introduction to 

Rapoport, Amnon. Experimental studies of interactive decisions. Vol. 5. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

"The history of experimentation in psychology is rich and old. It would have been quite natural and highly desirable for psychologists to extend their scope of research and assume a major role in the study of economic decision behavior. Psychology professes to be the general study of human behavior. Most psychologists are trained to regard their discipline as an observational science; they do not have to overcome the conditioning of many economists who think of economics as an a priori science. Psychologists' knowledge of experimental techniques is comprehensive. and their experience in conducting experiments. analyzing data. and discovering empirical regularities exceeds that of most economists. However. with the exception of research on individual choice behavior - where psychologists like Tversky, Kahneman, and Slovic have played a major role - psychologists have not contributed in any significant way to the growing research in experimental economics. Social psychologists for whom interactive behavior is the core of their discipline, have virtually abandoned the study of economic decisions in small groups to their colleagues in economics and related disciplines. "

Here's his cv as of 2017, and his google scholar page.

**********

Update: here's an email that Rami Zwick sent to the Economic Science Association (ESA):

"Dear ESA community,

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our teacher, mentor, colleague, co-author and friend, Professor Amnon Rapoport, in Tucson Arizona on December 6, 2022. 

Professor Rapoport served on the faculty of the University of California, Riverside School of Business; University of Arizona; UNC Chapel Hill; University of Haifa, Israel; and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then went on to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. in quantitative psychology at UNC Chapel Hill. 

Professor Rapoport was one of the pioneers and leaders in the experimental study and quantitative modeling of human decisions in social and interactive contexts. During his distinguished career, he published four books (and edited others) and more than 300 research papers and chapters in leading psychological, management, operation, marketing, decision theory, economics, and political science journals, and is recognized as a leading authority in many of these areas. His most important and influential work was on experimental studies of interactive decision-making behavior. This includes theoretical and empirical research on: 

• Coalition formation 

• Bargaining 

• Social dilemmas 

• Behavioral operations management 

• Behavioral game theory 

• Dynamic pricing 

• Directed networks 

 Professor Rapoport’s work was theory-driven, and, in most cases, the theory was represented formally by mathematical (primarily, but not exclusively, game theoretical) models. At the same time, he was a meticulous and rigorous, yet imaginative and creative experimentalist. In fact, he was one of the pioneers of computerized experimentation in the domain of individual and group decision making. 

With a career spanning over 60 years, Professor Rapoport nurtured and supported the careers of generations of scholars and researchers. He will be greatly missed by his family, friends, colleagues, co-authors, and students."