Universidad de Granada. Departamento de Teoría e Historia Económica
Abstract
Este trabajo ha sido publicado en Central European Journal of Operations Research 12(4): 369-287 (2004).This paper introduces some new features in the standard experimental
design of the beauty contest in order to allow communication among participants.
With that aim, we use the mode instead of the mean and non-rival
payoffs. This design encourages students to communicate their guessed number, with a higher probability if subjects know the 0 Nash equilibrium.
The lack of communication can only be explained by subjects endowed with
competitive other-regarding preferences. Experiments are run in 11 classrooms
ranging from 11 to 60 students in size. Participants are given at
least one week to submit their guesses and a questionnaire explaining their
choice. Results indicate that: i) communication induces coordination in the
responses, ii) communication does not guarantee any improvement in the
average reasoning level, iii) there exist significative differences according to
classroom size and duration of degree.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support
from the University of Jaén R+D program (# 20210/148)