Some First Results for Noncooperative Pregames : Social Conformity and Equilibrium in Pure Strategies.

We introduce the framework of noncooperative pregames and demonstrate that for all games with sufficiently many players, there exists approximate (E) Nash equilibria in pure strategies. Moreover, an equilibrium can be selected with the property that most players choose the same strategies as all other players with similar attributes. More precisely, there is an integer K, depending on E but not on the number of players so that any sufficiently large society can be partitioned into fewer than K groups, or cultures, consisting of similar players, and all players in the same group play the same pure strategy. In ongoing research we are extending the model to cover a broader class of situations, including incomplete information.GAMES ; INFORMATION ; STRATEGIC PLANNING

Alternating bid bargaining with a smallest money unit

Bargaining

How to Play 3x3 Games: A Strategy Method Experiment

Using the strategy method (Selten 1967) we elicit subjects' strategies for playing any 2-person 3x3-game with integer payoffs between 0 and 99.In each of 5 tournaments, every strategy pair plays 500000 games.The frequency of pure strategy equilibrium play increases from 51% in the first to 74% in the last tournament, with the equilibria that maximize joint payoff being preferred when multiple exist.For games without pure equilibria, strategies are typically based on elements of the best-reply cascade: MAP (maximize the expected payoff against uniformly randomizing opponents), BR-MAP (best reply to MAP), and BR-BR-MAP (best reply to BR-MAP).game theory;experimental economics

Strategic Aspects of IIASA's Food and Agricultural Model

The linkage model of IIASA's Food and Agriculture Program (FAP) can be described as an econometric world model which investigates the interaction of many national economies on a number of agricultural markets and one residual nonagricultural market. The model contains a number of policy parameters which can be determined by the national governments in order to improve the economic results. Given that one can specify a goal function for every country, the IIASA linkage model can be thus viewed as a strategic game with the governments of the various countries as players. In this paper some of the strategic aspects of the IIASA linkage model are investigated. Reasons of analytic tractability made it advisable to study a radically simplified version with only two commodities, food and nonfood, and with rather simple assumptions on government objectives such as short-run minimization of the costs of agricultural policy. One of the major results is that under apparently weak restrictions on the parameters of our model it is an optimal policy for all countries to supply as much food as possible, which seems to contradict commonly held intuitions. Of course, one still has to determine whether the same result would hold for more complex models and whether the conditions would really be satisfied by econometrically specified model parameters. The basic reason for this counter-intuitive result in our game model is that demand is specified by linear expenditure systems. We therefore suggest alternative demand specifications, which would avoid the difficulties of linear expenditure systems

Learning in experimental games

In this paper, we introduce two new learning models: action-sampling learning and impulse-matching learning. These two models, together with the models of self-tuning EWA and reinforcement learning, are applied to 12 different 2 X 2 games and their results are compared with the results from experimental data. We test whether the models are capable of replicating the aggregate distribution of behavior, as well as correctly predicting individualsʼ round-by-round behavior. Our results are two-fold: while the simulations with impulse-matching and action-sampling learning successfully replicate the experimental data on the aggregate level, individual behavior is best described by self-tuning EWA. Nevertheless, impulse-matching learning has the second-highest score for the individual data. In addition, only self-tuning EWA and impulse-matching learning lead to better round-by-round predictions than the aggregate frequencies, which means they adjust their predictions correctly over time

Generalized impulse balance: an experimental test for a class of 3 X 3 games

In this paper, we introduce a generalized version of impulse balance equilibrium. The stationary concept is applied to 3 × 3 games based on the Bailiff and Poacher Game (Selten, 1991) and its predictive success is experimentally tested against the one of Nash equilibrium. Experiments with 26 different games were conducted; 12 games with completely mixed Nash equilibria and 14 games with partially mixed Nash equilibria. In all the games, generalized impulse balance yields predictions that are closer to the data than the ones of Nash equilibrium. Overall, generalized impulse balance has a significantly higher predictive success than Nash equilibrium

Impulse balance and framing effects in threshold public good games

In this paper, we revisit the evidence for framing effects in threshold public good games. Our particular focus is on why the probability of providing the public good appears to be higher in positive, give frames compared with negative, take frames. We show that the impulse balance theory can explain this effect. We also report a new experiment designed to test the predictions of the impulse balance theory. The results of the experiment fit well, both in quantitative and qualitative terms, with our predictions.</p