COMMUNICATION AND COORDINATION IN THE LABORATORY COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE GAME

This paper presents a laboratory collective resistance (CR) game to study how different forms of non-binding communication among responders can help coordinate their collective resistance against a leader who transgresses against them. Contrary to the predictions of analysis based on purely self-regarding preferences, we find that non-binding communication about intended resistance increases the incidence of no transgression even in the one-shot laboratory CR game. In particular, we find that the incidence of no transgression increases from 7 percent with no communication up to 25-37 percent depending on whether communication occurs before or after the leader’s transgression decision. Responders’ messages are different when the leaders can observe them, and the leaders use the observed messages to target specific responders for transgression.Communication, Cheap Talk, Collective Resistance, Laboratory Experiment, Social Preferences

COORDINATING COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE THROUGH COMMUNICATION AND REPEATED INTERACTION

This paper presents a laboratory collective resistance (CR) game to study how different forms of repeated interactions, with and without communication, can help coordinate subordinates' collective resistance to a ???divide-and-conquer??? transgression against their personal interests. In the one-shot CR game, a first???mover (the ???leader???) decides whether to transgress against two responders. Successful transgression increases the payoff of the leader at the expense of the victim(s) of transgression. The two responders then simultaneously decide whether to challenge the leader. The subordinates face a coordination problem in that their challenge against the leader's transgression will only succeed if both of them incur the cost to do so. The outcome without transgression can occur in equilibrium with standard money-maximizing preferences with repeated interactions, but this outcome is not an equilibrium with standard preferences when adding non-binding subordinate ???cheap talk??? communication in the one-shot game. Nevertheless, we find that communication (in the one-shot game) is at least as effective as repetition (with no communication) in reducing the transgression rate. Moreover, communication is better than repetition in coordinating resistance, because it makes it easier for subordinates to identify others who have social preferences and are willing to incur the cost to punish a violation of social norms.Communication, Cheap Talk, Collective Resistance, Divide-and-Conquer, Laboratory Experiment, Repeated Games, Social Preferences

Uncertainty and Resistance to Reform in Laboratory Participation Games

This paper presents a participation game experiment to study the impact of uncertainty and costly political participation on the incidence of reform. Fernandez and Rodrik (1991) show that uncertainty about who will ultimately gain or lose as a result of a reform can prevent its adoption. We introduce intra-group conflict into this framework by incorporating costly political participation, which creates a natural incentive for free-riding on fellow group members’ efforts to influence policy outcomes. An agent, however, may still be willing to participate if her participation is likely to affect the policy outcome given the probabilities of participation by others. Our experimental findings show that uncertainty reduces the incidence of reform even with costly political participation, and that an increase in the cost of participation reduces the participation of all agents, regardless of whether they belong to the majority and minority. This second result cannot be reconciled with the standard mixed strategy Nash equilibrium, but is consistent with the quantal response equilibrium.Reform, Uncertainty, Experiment, Participation Game, Bounded Rationality, Quantal Response Equilibrium

Communication and Coordination in the Laboratory Collective Resistance Game

This paper presents a laboratory collective resistance (CR) game to study how different forms of non-binding communication among responders can help coordinate their collective resistance against a leader who transgresses against them. Contrary to the predictions of analysis based on purely self-regarding preferences, we find that non-binding communication about intended resistance increases the incidence of no transgression even in the one-shot laboratory CR game. In particular, we find that the incidence of no transgression increases from 7 percent with no communication up to 25-37 percent depending on whether communication occurs before or after the leader’s transgression decision. Responders’ messages are different when the leaders can observe them, and the leaders use the observed messages to target specific responders for transgression.Communication ; Cheap Talk ; Collective Resistance ; Laboratory Experiment ; Social Preferences

Using Turn Taking to Mitigate Conflict and Coordination Problems in the Repeated Battle of the Sexes Game

The Battle of the Sexes game, which captures both conflict and coordination problems, has been applied to a wide range of situations. We show that, by reducing conflict of interests and enhancing coordination, (eventual) turn taking supported by a ???turn taking with independent randomizations' strategy allows the players to engage in intertemporal sharing of the gain from cooperation. Using this insight, we decompose the benefit from turn taking into conflict-mitigating and coordination-enhancing components. Our analysis suggests that an equilibrium measure of the ???intertemporal degree of conflict??? provides an intuitive way to understand the sources of welfare gain from turn taking in the repeated Battle of the Sexes game. We find that when this equilibrium measure is higher, players behave more aggressively and the welfare gain from turn taking is smaller.Battle of the Sexes game, turn taking, conflict-mitigating, coordinationenhancing

Achieving Intertemporal Efficiency and Symmetry through Intratemporal Asymmetry: (Eventual) Turn Taking in a Class of Repeated Mixed-Interest Games

Turn taking is observed in many field and laboratory settings. We study when and how turn taking can be supported as an equilibrium outcome in a class of repeated games, where the stage game is a symmetric two-player mixed-interest game with asymmetric joint-payoff-maximizing outcomes that may or may not be Nash equilibria. We consider the "turn taking with independent randomizations" (TTIR) strategy that achieves the following three objectives: (a) helping the players get onto a joint-payoff-maximizing turn-taking path, (b) resolving the question of who gets to start with the good turn first, and (c) deterring defection. The TTIR strategy is simpler than those time-varying strategies considered in the Folk Theorem for repeated games. We determine conditions under which a symmetric TTIR subgame-perfect equilibrium exists and is unique. We also derive comparative static results, and study the welfare properties of the TTIR equilibrium.Conflict, Coordination, Randomization, Turn Taking, Repeated Games