IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v324y2003i1p124-132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A laboratory experiment on the minority game

Author

Listed:
  • Bottazzi, Giulio
  • Devetag, Giovanna

Abstract

This work presents experimental results on a coordination game in which agents must repeatedly choose between two sides, and a positive fixed payoff is assigned only to agents who pick the minoritarian side. We conduct laboratory experiments in which stationary groups of five players play the game for 100 periods, and manipulate two treatment variables: the amount of ‘memory’ M that players have regarding the game history (i.e., the length of the string of past outcomes that players can see on the screen while choosing) and the amount of information about other players’ past choices. Our results show that, at the aggregate level, a quite remarkable degree of coordination is achieved. Moreover, providing players with full information about other players’ choice distribution does not appear to improve efficiency significantly.

Suggested Citation

  • Bottazzi, Giulio & Devetag, Giovanna, 2003. "A laboratory experiment on the minority game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 324(1), pages 124-132.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:324:y:2003:i:1:p:124-132
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01893-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437102018939
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01893-9?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. Jack Ochs, 1990. "The Coordination Problem in Decentralized Markets: An Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 545-559.
    2. Arthur, W Brian, 1994. "Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 406-411, May.
    3. W. Brian Arthur, 1994. "Inductive Reasoning, Bounded Rationality and the Bar Problem," Working Papers 94-03-014, Santa Fe Institute.
    4. Challet, D. & Zhang, Y.-C., 1997. "Emergence of cooperation and organization in an evolutionary game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 246(3), pages 407-418.
    5. Challet, Damien & Zhang, Yi-Cheng, 1998. "On the minority game: Analytical and numerical studies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 256(3), pages 514-532.
    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. Yamada, Takashi & Hanaki, Nobuyuki, 2016. "An experiment on Lowest Unique Integer Games," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 463(C), pages 88-102.
    2. Dindo, P.D.E. & Tuinstra, J., 2006. "A Behavioral Model for Participation Games with Negative Feedback," CeNDEF Working Papers 06-10, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    3. Pietro Dindo & Jan Tuinstra, 2011. "A Class of Evolutionary Models for Participation Games with Negative Feedback," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 37(3), pages 267-300, March.
    4. Linde, Jona & Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2014. "Strategies and evolution in the minority game: A multi-round strategy experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 77-95.
    5. Nadir Altinok & Abdurrahman Aydemir, 2015. "The Unfolding of Gender Gap in Education," Working Papers 934, Economic Research Forum, revised Aug 2015.
    6. Kirman, Alan P. & Laisney, François & Pezanis-Christou, Paul, 2018. "Exploration vs exploitation, impulse balance equilibrium, and a specification test for the El Farol bar problem," ZEW Discussion Papers 18-038, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    7. Michael E Roberts & Robert L Goldstone, 2011. "Adaptive Group Coordination and Role Differentiation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(7), pages 1-8, July.

    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. Płatkowski, Tadeusz & Ramsza, Michał, 2003. "Playing minority game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 323(C), pages 726-734.
    2. Willemien Kets, 2007. "The minority game: An economics perspective," Papers 0706.4432, arXiv.org.
    3. Linde, Jona & Gietl, Daniel & Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2023. "The effect of quantity and quality of information in strategy tournaments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 305-323.
    4. Kets, W., 2008. "Networks and learning in game theory," Other publications TiSEM 7713fce1-3131-498c-8c6f-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Wawrzyniak, Karol & Wiślicki, Wojciech, 2012. "Mesoscopic approach to minority games in herd regime," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(5), pages 2056-2082.
    6. Linde, Jona & Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2014. "Strategies and evolution in the minority game: A multi-round strategy experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 77-95.
    7. Giovanna Devetag & Francesca Pancotto & Thomas Brenner, 2011. "The Minority Game Unpacked: Coordination and Competition in a Team-based Experiment," LEM Papers Series 2011/18, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    8. Chmura, Thorsten & Pitz, Thomas, 2004. "Minority Game: Experiments and Simulations of Traffic Scenarios," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 23/2004, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    9. Giulio Bottazzi & Giovanna Devetag, 2002. "Coordination and self-organization in minority games: experimental evidence," CEEL Working Papers 0215, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    10. Cross, Rod & Grinfeld, Michael & Lamba, Harbir & Seaman, Tim, 2005. "A threshold model of investor psychology," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 354(C), pages 463-478.
    11. Andersen, Jørgen Vitting & de Peretti, Philippe, 2021. "Heuristics in experiments with infinitely large strategy spaces," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 612-620.
    12. Marsili, Matteo & Challet, Damien & Zecchina, Riccardo, 2000. "Exact solution of a modified El Farol's bar problem: Efficiency and the role of market impact," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 280(3), pages 522-553.
    13. Chmura, T. & Pitz, T., 2006. "Successful strategies in repeated minority games," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 363(2), pages 477-480.
    14. Yamada, Takashi & Hanaki, Nobuyuki, 2016. "An experiment on Lowest Unique Integer Games," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 463(C), pages 88-102.
    15. Jørgen Vitting Andersen & Philippe de Peretti, 2020. "Heuristics in experiments with infinitely large strategy spaces," Post-Print hal-02435934, HAL.
    16. Epstein, Daniel & Bazzan, Ana L.C., 2013. "The value of less connected agents in Boolean networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(21), pages 5387-5398.
    17. Ferreira, Fernando F & Francisco, Gerson & Machado, Birajara S & Muruganandam, Paulsamy, 2003. "Time series analysis for minority game simulations of financial markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 321(3), pages 619-632.
    18. Jørgen Vitting Andersen & Philippe de Peretti, 2020. "Heuristics in experiments with infinitely large strategy spaces," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-02435934, HAL.
    19. J{o}rgen Vitting Andersen & Philippe de Peretti, 2020. "Heuristics in experiments with infinitely large strategy spaces," Papers 2005.02337, arXiv.org.
    20. Vee-Liem Saw & Lock Yue Chew, 2020. "No-boarding buses: Synchronisation for efficiency," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-34, March.

    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:phsmap:v:324:y:2003:i:1:p:124-132. 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.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    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.