Learning From The Skills Of Others: Experimental Evidence

Abstract

This paper reports an experimental test of how, when observing others' actions, participants learn more than just information that the others have. We use a setting where all information is public and where subjects face two kinds of information sets: (1) the information that is necessary and su±cient for them to payoff-maximize and (2) the decisions of previous players. We show that by observing the second type of information subjects learn how to improve their own decision-making process. Specifically, the accurate players make small errors no matter what information set they face whereas the inaccurate players perform much better when the decisions of others are public.