TY - JOUR
T1 - An experimental study of communication and coordination in noncooperative games
AU - Moreno, Diego
AU - Wooders, John
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to test the usefulness of alternative solution concepts to explain players' behavior in noncooperative games with preplay communication. In the experiment subjects communicate by plain con¨ersation prior to playing a simple game. In this setting, we ®nd that the presumption of indi¨idualistic and independent behavior underlying the concept of Nash equilibrium is inappropriate. Instead, we observe behavior to be coordinated and correlated. Statistical tests reject Nash equilibrium as an explanation of observed play. The coalition proof correlated equilibrium of the game, however, explains the data when the possibility of errors by players is introduced. Journal of Economic Literature Classi®cation Numbers: C72, C92. Q 1998 Academic Press *We are grateful to Mark Walker for his encouragement and for many helpful discussions, and to Doc Ghose for many valuable suggestions. Also we thank Jason Shachat, Vernon Smith, the associate editor and referees for useful comments, the Economic Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona for providing research support, the Ventana Corporation for authorizing the use of Groupsystems as the communication software in our experiment, and Doug Vogel for assisting us in the use of this software. ²This author gratefully acknowledges ®nancial support from the Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales through funds administered by the CÂatedra Gumersindo de AzcÂarate, and from DGICYT grant PB94-0378. ³E-mail address: [email protected]. §This author gratefully acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Education. 5E-mail address: [email protected].
PY - 1998/7
Y1 - 1998/7
N2 - This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to test the usefulness of alternative solution concepts to explain players' behavior in noncooperative games with preplay communication. In the experiment subjects communicate by plain conversation prior to playing a simple game. In this setting, we find that the presumption of individualistic and independent behavior underlying the concept of Nash equilibrium is inappropriate. Instead, we observe behavior to be coordinated and correlated. Statistical tests reject Nash equilibrium as an explanation of observed play. The coalition proof correlated equilibrium of the game, however, explains the data when the possibility of errors by players is introduced. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C92.
AB - This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to test the usefulness of alternative solution concepts to explain players' behavior in noncooperative games with preplay communication. In the experiment subjects communicate by plain conversation prior to playing a simple game. In this setting, we find that the presumption of individualistic and independent behavior underlying the concept of Nash equilibrium is inappropriate. Instead, we observe behavior to be coordinated and correlated. Statistical tests reject Nash equilibrium as an explanation of observed play. The coalition proof correlated equilibrium of the game, however, explains the data when the possibility of errors by players is introduced. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C92.
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U2 - 10.1006/game.1997.0624
DO - 10.1006/game.1997.0624
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0009336478
SN - 0899-8256
VL - 24
SP - 47
EP - 76
JO - Games and Economic Behavior
JF - Games and Economic Behavior
IS - 1-2
ER -