War of Attrition: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment on Market Exit

We report an experiment designed to study whether inecient rms are systematically driven from overcrowded markets. We implement a series of 3800 wars of attrition of a type modeled in Fudenberg and Tirole (1986). Exit tends to be ecient and exit times conform reasonably well to point predictions of the model. Moreover, we nd that subjects respond similarly to implementations framed in terms of losses as they do to those framed in terms of gains.Market exit, war of attrition, experimental economics

It's My Turn ... Please, After You: An Experimental Study of Cooperation and Social Conventions

We introduce a class of two-player cooperation games where each player faces a binary decision, enter or exit. These games have a unique Nash equilibrium of entry. However, entry imposes a large enough negative externality on the other player such that the unique social optimum involves the player with the higher value to entry entering and the other player exiting. When the game is repeated and players' values to entry are private, cooperation admits the form of either taking turns entering or using a cutoff strategy and entering only for high private values of entry. Even with conditions that provide opportunities for unnoticed or non-punishable 'cheating', our empirical analysis including a simple strategy inference technique reveals that the Nash-equilibrium strategy is never the modal choice. In fact, most subjects employ the socially optimal symmetric cutoff strategy. These games capture the nature of cooperation in many economic and social situations such as bidding rings in auctions, competition for market share, labor supply decisions in the face of excess supply, queuing in line and courtship.cooperation, incomplete information, random payoffs, strategy inference, experimental economics.

on the efficiency of team-based meritocracies

According to theory a pure meritocracy is efficient because individual members are competitively rewarded according to their individual contributions to society. However, purely individually based meritocracies seldom occur. We introduce a new model of social production called “team-based meritocracy” (TBM) in which individual members are rewarded based on their team membership. We demonstrate that as long as such team membership is both mobile and competitively based on contributions, individuals are able to tacitly coordinate a complex and counterintuitive asymmetric equilibrium that is close to Pareto-optimal, possibly indicating that such a group-based meritocracy could be a social structure to which humans respond with particular ease. Our findings are relevant to many contemporary societies in which rewards are at least in part determined via membership in organizations such as for example firms, and organizational membership is increasingly determined by contribution rather than privilege.social stratification, meritocracies, mechanism design, non-cooperative games, experiment, team production

A Behavioral Approach to Learning in Economics - Towards an Economic Theory of Contingent Learning

In economics, adjustment of behavior has traditionally been treated as a "black box." Recent approaches that focus on learning behavior try to model, test, and simulate specific adjustment mechanisms in specific environments (mostly in games). Results often critically depend on distinctive assumptions, and are not easy to generalize. This paper proposes a different approach that aims to allow for more general conclusions in a methodologically more compatible way. It is argued that the introduction of the main determinants of learning behavior as situational restrictions into the standard economic model may be a fruitful way to capture some important aspects of human behavior that have often been omitted in economic theory. Based on a simple model of learning behavior (learning loop), robust findings from psychology are used to explain behavior adjustment, and to identify its determinants (contingent learning). An integrative methodology is proposed where the "black box" is not opened, but instead the factors that determine what happens inside, and the limits imposed by theses factors can be analyzed and used for model building. The paper concludes with testable hypotheses about learning behavior in the context of economics.microeconomics, game theory, learning theory, experiments

Imitation and the emergence of Nash equilibrium play in games with many players

We model a learning dynamic in which players imitate and innovate. Of interest is to question whether Nash equilibrium play emerges, and if so, the role that imitation plays in this emergence. Our main result provides a general class of coordination games for which approximate Nash equilibrium play does emerge. Important conditions include that players imitate "similar" individuals. The role of imitation in learning is discussed in the context of two examples where it is shown that imitation can lead to pareto superio outcomes

Snowball effect and traffic equilibrium in a market entry game: A laboratory experiment

The Market Entry Game (Selten & Guth, 1982; Gary-Bobo, 1990) is a coordination game where average cost of entry increase linearly. Following the suggestion of Anderson et al. (2008) and empirical evidence in transport economics suggested by related literature about the Speed-Flow Relationship (Verhoef, 2005), we built a theoretical model of market entry game where congestion cost increases at an increasing rate when the flow of entrants grows (snowball MEG). The calibration of experimental parameters enables us to compare outcomes regarding Snowball MEG to a benchmark based on a usual linear MEG (calibration being the same as in Anderson et al., 2008). Then, we run an experiment where theoretical predictions for both models give comparable entry rate and add more or less the same properties. Moreover, we conduct variation about group size in order to assess size effect on coordination level. Basically, we find no significant difference between the aggregated entry rates in our snowball game compared to usual MEG. But size clearly matters, especially for issue regarding successful coordination for users in the snowball MEG

LEARNING TO PLAY APPROXIMATE NASH EQUILIBRIA IN GAMES WITH MANY PLAYERS

We illustrate one way in which a population of boundedly rational individuals can learn to play an approximate Nash equilibrium. Players are assumed to make strategy choices using a combination of imitation and innovation. We begin by looking at an imitation dynamic and provide conditions under which play evolves to an imitation equilibrium ; convergence is conditional on the network of social interaction. We then illustrate, through example, how imitation and innovation can complement each other; in particular, we demonstrate how imitation can help a population to learn to play a Nash equilibrium where more rational methods do not. This leads to our main result in which we provide a general class of large game for which the imitation with innovation dynamic almost surely converges to an approximate Nash, imitation equilibrium.imitation ; best reply ; convergence ; Nash equilibrium

A general framework of agent-based simulation for analyzing behavior of players in games, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2007, nr 4

In this paper, we give a general framework of agent-based simulation for analyzing behavior of players in various types of games. In our simulation model, artificial adaptive agents have a mechanism of decision making and learning based on neural networks and genetic algorithms. The synaptic weights and thresholds characterizing the neural network of an artificial agent are revised in order that the artificial agent obtains larger payoffs through a genetic algorithm. The proposed framework is illustrated with two examples, and, by giving some simulation result, we demonstrate availability of the simulation analysis by the proposed framework of agent-based simulation, from which a wide variety of simulation settings can be easily implemented and detailed data and statistics are obtained

Modeling the Psychology of Consumer and Firm Behavior with Behavioral Economics

Marketing is an applied science that tries to explain and influence how firms and consumers actually behave in markets. Marketing models are usually applications of economic theories. These theories are general and produce precise predictions, but they rely on strong assumptions of rationality of consumers and firms. Theories based on rationality limits could prove similarly general and precise, while grounding theories in psychological plausibility and explaining facts which are puzzles for the standard approach. Behavioral economics explores the implications of limits of rationality. The goal is to make economic theories more plausible while maintaining formal power and accurate prediction of field data. This review focuses selectively on six types of models used in behavioral economics that can be applied to marketing. Three of the models generalize consumer preference to allow (1) sensitivity to reference points (and loss-aversion); (2) social preferences toward outcomes of others; and (3) preference for instant gratification (quasi-hyperbolic discounting). The three models are applied to industrial channel bargaining, salesforce compensation, and pricing of virtuous goods such as gym memberships. The other three models generalize the concept of gametheoretic equilibrium, allowing decision makers to make mistakes (quantal response equilibrium), encounter limits on the depth of strategic thinking (cognitive hierarchy), and equilibrate by learning from feedback (self-tuning EWA). These are applied to marketing strategy problems involving differentiated products, competitive entry into large and small markets, and low-price guarantees. The main goal of this selected review is to encourage marketing researchers of all kinds to apply these tools to marketing. Understanding the models and applying them is a technical challenge for marketing modelers, which also requires thoughtful input from psychologists studying details of consumer behavior. As a result, models like these could create a common language for modelers who prize formality and psychologists who prize realism