IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v141y2022ics0014292121002464.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can market selection reduce anomalous behaviour in games?

Author

Listed:
  • Choo, Lawrence
  • Zhou, Xiaoyu

Abstract

We use an experiment to study whether market selection can reduce anomalous behaviour in games. In different treatments, we employ two alternative mechanisms, the random mechanism and the auction mechanism, to allocate the participation rights to the red hat puzzle game, a well-known logical reasoning problem. Compared to the random mechanism, the auction mechanism significantly reduces deviations from the equilibrium play in the red hat puzzle game. Our findings show that under carefully designed incentives, market competition can indeed reduce anomalous behaviour in games.

Suggested Citation

  • Choo, Lawrence & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2022. "Can market selection reduce anomalous behaviour in games?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:141:y:2022:i:c:s0014292121002464
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103958
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292121002464
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103958?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Haltiwanger, John & Waldman, Michael, 1985. "Rational Expectations and the Limits of Rationality: An Analysis of Heterogeneity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 326-340, June.
    2. Van Huyck John B. & Battalio Raymond C. & Beil Richard O., 1993. "Asset Markets as an Equilibrium Selection Mechanism: Coordination Failure, Game Form Auctions, and Tacit Communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 485-504, July.
    3. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    4. Jason Shachat & J. Todd Swarthout, 2013. "Auctioning the Right to Play Ultimatum Games and the Impact on Equilibrium Selection," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-16, November.
    5. Xavier Gabaix, 2017. "Behavioral Inattention," NBER Working Papers 24096, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Cary Deck & Maroš Servátka & Steven Tucker, 2020. "Designing Call Auction Institutions to Eliminate Price Bubbles: Is English Dutch the Best?," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 225-236, June.
    7. Theo Offerman & Jan Potters, 2006. "Does Auctioning of Entry Licences Induce Collusion? An Experimental Study," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 769-791.
    8. Shimon Kogan & Anthony M. Kwasnica & Roberto A. Weber, 2011. "Coordination in the Presence of Asset Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 927-947, April.
    9. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Halladay, Brianna, 2016. "Experimental methods: Pay one or pay all," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 141-150.
    10. Armen A. Alchian, 1950. "Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3), pages 211-211.
    11. Vernon L. Smith, 1962. "An Experimental Study of Competitive Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 322-322.
    12. Ralph-C. Bayer & Mickey Chan, 2007. "The Dirty Faces Game Revisited," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2007-01, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    13. Bruno Broseta & Enrique Fatas & Tibor Neugebauer, 2003. "Asset Markets and Equilibrium Selection in Public Goods Games with Provision Points: An Experimental Study," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(4), pages 574-591, October.
    14. Larry Samuelson, 2004. "Modeling Knowledge in Economic Analysis," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(2), pages 367-403, June.
    15. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    16. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2005. "Individual Irrationality and Aggregate Outcomes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 43-66, Fall.
    17. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2008. "Limited Rationality and Strategic Interaction: The Impact of the Strategic Environment on Nominal Inertia," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(2), pages 353-394, March.
    18. Lawrence Blume & David Easley, 2006. "If You're so Smart, why Aren't You Rich? Belief Selection in Complete and Incomplete Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 929-966, July.
    19. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:969-998 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. John Haltiwanger & Michael Waldman, 1989. "Limited Rationality and Strategic Complements: The Implications for Macroeconomics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(3), pages 463-483.
    21. Kagel, John H & Levin, Dan, 1993. "Independent Private Value Auctions: Bidder Behaviour in First-, Second- and Third-Price Auctions with Varying Numbers of Bidders," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(419), pages 868-879, July.
    22. Crawford, Vincent & Broseta, Bruno, 1998. "What Price Coordination? The Efficiency-Enhancing Effect of Auctioning the Right to Play," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 198-225, March.
    23. R. M. Harstad & R. Selten, 2014. "Bounded-rationality models:tasks to become intellectually competitive," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 5.
    24. Matthew Rabin, 1998. "Psychology and Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 11-46, March.
    25. Choo, Lawrence & Kaplan, Todd R. & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Can auctions select people by their level-k types?," MPRA Paper 95987, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    26. De Long, J Bradford & Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H & Waldmann, Robert J, 1991. "The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(1), pages 1-19, January.
    27. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    28. Vincent P. Crawford & Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Nagore Iriberri, 2013. "Structural Models of Nonequilibrium Strategic Thinking: Theory, Evidence, and Applications," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 5-62, March.
    29. Smith, Vernon L, 1991. "Rational Choice: The Contrast between Economics and Psychology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(4), pages 877-897, August.
    30. Matthew Rabin, 2013. "Incorporating Limited Rationality into Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 528-543, June.
    31. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    32. Stahl, Dale II & Wilson, Paul W., 1994. "Experimental evidence on players' models of other players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 309-327, December.
    33. Collins, Sean M. & James, Duncan & Servátka, Maroš & Woods, Daniel, 2017. "Price-setting and attainment of equilibrium: Posted offers versus an administered price," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 277-293.
    34. Kendall, Chad & Oprea, Ryan, 2018. "Are biased beliefs fit to survive? An experimental test of the market selection hypothesis," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 342-371.
    35. Gode, Dhananjay K & Sunder, Shyam, 1993. "Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 119-137, February.
    36. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    37. John Conlisk, 1996. "Why Bounded Rationality?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 669-700, June.
    38. Bayer, Ralph C. & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Logical omniscience at the laboratory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-49.
    39. Blume, Lawrence & Easley, David, 1992. "Evolution and market behavior," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 9-40, October.
    40. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    41. V. P. Crawford, 2014. "Boundedly rational versus optimization-based models of strategic thinking and learning in games," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 5.
    42. Bayer, R.-C. & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Logical abilities and behavior in strategic-form games," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 39-59.
    43. Erik Hoelzl & Aldo Rustichini, 2005. "Overconfident: Do You Put Your Money On It?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(503), pages 305-318, April.
    44. David V. Budescu & Boris Maciejovsky, 2005. "The Effect of Payoff Feedback and Information Pooling on Reasoning Errors: Evidence from Experimental Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(12), pages 1829-1843, December.
    45. Eileen Chou & Margaret McConnell & Rosemarie Nagel & Charles Plott, 2009. "The control of game form recognition in experiments: understanding dominant strategy failures in a simple two person “guessing” game," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(2), pages 159-179, June.
    46. John Geanakoplos, 1992. "Common Knowledge," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 53-82, Fall.
    47. Dan Lovallo & Colin Camerer, 1999. "Overconfidence and Excess Entry: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 306-318, March.
    48. J. Michael Harrison & David M. Kreps, 1978. "Speculative Investor Behavior in a Stock Market with Heterogeneous Expectations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(2), pages 323-336.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Po-Hsuan Lin, 2022. "Cognitive Hierarchies in Multi-Stage Games of Incomplete Information: Theory and Experiment," Papers 2208.11190, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Choo, Lawrence & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Can market competition reduce anomalous behaviours," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 08/2019, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    2. Choo, Lawrence, 2016. "Market competition for decision rights: An experiment based on the “Hat Puzzle Problem”," MPRA Paper 73408, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Choo, Lawrence & Kaplan, Todd R. & Zhou, Xiaoyu, 2019. "Can auctions select people by their level-k types?," MPRA Paper 95987, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Hanaki, Nobuyuki & Koriyama, Yukio & Sutan, Angela & Willinger, Marc, 2019. "The strategic environment effect in beauty contest games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 587-610.
    5. Bulutay, Muhammed & Cornand, Camille & Zylbersztejn, Adam, 2022. "Learning to deal with repeated shocks under strategic complementarity: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1318-1343.
    6. Cooper, Kristen B. & Schneider, Henry S. & Waldman, Michael, 2017. "Limited rationality and the strategic environment: Further theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 188-208.
    7. Nobuyuki Hanaki, 2020. "Cognitive ability and observed behavior in laboratory experiments: implications for macroeconomic theory," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 71(3), pages 355-378, July.
    8. Eizo Akiyama & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Ryuichiro Ishikawa, 2017. "It is Not Just Confusion! Strategic Uncertainty in An Experimental Asset Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 563-580, October.
    9. Montero, Maria & Sheth, Jesal D., 2021. "Naivety about hidden information: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 92-116.
    10. Nobuyuki Hanaki & Angela Sutan & Marc Willinger, 2016. "The Strategic Environment Effect in Beauty Contest Games," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-05, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.
    11. Choo, Lawrence C.Y & Kaplan, Todd R., 2014. "Explaining Behavior in the "11-20" Game," MPRA Paper 52808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    13. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Johannes Buckenmaier, 2021. "Cognitive sophistication and deliberation times," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 558-592, June.
    14. Cooper, Kristen & Schneider, Henry & Waldman, Michael, 2021. "Limited rationality and the strategic environment: Further evidence from a pricing game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    15. Mikhail Anufriev & John Duffy & Valentyn Panchenko, "undated". "Planar Beauty Contests," Discussion Papers 2019-06, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    16. Marcus Giamattei, 2022. "Can Cold Turkey Reduce Inflation Inertia? Evidence on Disinflation and Level‐k Thinking from a Laboratory Experiment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(8), pages 2477-2517, December.
    17. Cooper, David J. & Ioannou, Christos A. & Qi, Shi, 2018. "Endogenous incentive contracts and efficient coordination," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 78-97.
    18. Dietmar Fehr & Steffen Huck, 2016. "Who knows it is a game? On strategic awareness and cognitive ability," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 713-726, December.
    19. Heemeijer, Peter & Hommes, Cars & Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2009. "Price stability and volatility in markets with positive and negative expectations feedback: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1052-1072, May.
    20. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market competition; Market selection; Auctions; Bounded-rationality; Red hat puzzle;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:141:y:2022:i:c:s0014292121002464. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.