IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mnh/spaper/2027.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are the Treasures of Game Theory Ambiguous?

Author

Listed:
  • Eichberger, Jürgen
  • Kelsey, David

Abstract

Goeree & Holt (2001) observe that, for some parameter values, Nash equilibrium provides good predictions for actual behaviour in experiments. For other payoff parameters, however, actual behaviour deviates consistently from that predicted by Nash equilibria. They attribute the robust deviations from Nash equilibrium to actual players’ considering not only marginal gains and losses but also total pay-offs. In this paper, we show that optimistic and pessimistic attitudes towards strategic ambiguity may induce such behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Eichberger, Jürgen & Kelsey, David, 2008. "Are the Treasures of Game Theory Ambiguous?," Papers 08-08, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    • Handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2027/1/001_dp08_08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lo, Kin Chung, 1996. "Equilibrium in Beliefs under Uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 443-484, November.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    3. Wakker, Peter P, 2001. "Testing and Characterizing Properties of Nonadditive Measures through Violations of the Sure-Thing Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 1039-1059, July.
    4. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
    5. Chateauneuf, Alain & Eichberger, Jurgen & Grant, Simon, 2007. "Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind: Neo-additive capacities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 538-567, November.
    6. Schmutzler, Armin, 2011. "A unified approach to comparative statics puzzles in experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 212-223, January.
    7. Richard T. Boylan & Simon Grant, 2008. "Incorporating fairness in generalized games of matching pennies," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 4(4), pages 445-458, December.
    8. Van Huyck, John B & Battalio, Raymond C & Beil, Richard O, 1990. "Tacit Coordination Games, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 234-248, March.
    9. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey, 2014. "Optimism And Pessimism In Games," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(2), pages 483-505, May.
    10. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2009. "Ambiguity and social interaction," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 355-379, April.
    11. Philip A. Haile & Ali Hortaçsu & Grigory Kosenok, 2008. "On the Empirical Content of Quantal Response Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 180-200, March.
    12. Cornes,Richard & Sandler,Todd, 1996. "The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521477185, September.
    13. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey, 2014. "Optimism And Pessimism In Games," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55, pages 483-505, May.
    14. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard Schipper, 2008. "Granny Versus Game Theorist: Ambiguity in Experimental Games," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 333-362, March.
    15. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    16. Marinacci, Massimo, 2000. "Ambiguous Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 191-219, May.
    17. Dow James & Werlang Sergio Ribeiro Da Costa, 1994. "Nash Equilibrium under Knightian Uncertainty: Breaking Down Backward Induction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 305-324, December.
    18. Jacob Goeree & Charles Holt & Thomas Palfrey, 2005. "Regular Quantal Response Equilibrium," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(4), pages 347-367, December.
    19. Eichberger, Jurgen & Kelsey, David, 2002. "Strategic Complements, Substitutes, and Ambiguity: The Implications for Public Goods," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 436-466, October.
    20. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    21. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey, 2004. "Sequential Two-Player Games With Ambiguity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1229-1261, November.
    22. Camerer, Colin & Weber, Martin, 1992. "Recent Developments in Modeling Preferences: Uncertainty and Ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 325-370, October.
    23. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    24. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    25. Pulford, Briony D. & Colman, Andrew M., 2007. "Ambiguous games: Evidence for strategic ambiguity aversion," MPRA Paper 86345, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    26. Thomas Jungbauer & Klaus Ritzberger, 2011. "Strategic games beyond expected utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(2), pages 377-398, October.
    27. Ochs Jack, 1995. "Games with Unique, Mixed Strategy Equilibria: An Experimental Study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 202-217, July.
    28. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    29. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    30. 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.
    31. Eichberger, Jurgen & Kelsey, David, 2000. "Non-Additive Beliefs and Strategic Equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 183-215, February.
    32. Tversky, Amos & Wakker, Peter, 1995. "Risk Attitudes and Decision Weights," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1255-1280, November.
    33. Michael Kilka & Martin Weber, 2001. "What Determines the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function Under Uncertainty?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(12), pages 1712-1726, December.
    34. Kin Chung Lo, 1999. "Nash equilibrium without mutual knowledge of rationality," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 14(3), pages 621-633.
    35. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    36. Basu, Kaushik, 1994. "The Traveler's Dilemma: Paradoxes of Rationality in Game Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 391-395, May.
    37. Mohammed Abdellaoui, 2000. "Parameter-Free Elicitation of Utility and Probability Weighting Functions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1497-1512, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. repec:awi:wpaper:0469 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Burkhard C. Schipper, 2021. "The evolutionary stability of optimism, pessimism, and complete ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 417-454, May.
    3. David Kelsey & Sara Roux, 2015. "An experimental study on the effect of ambiguity in a coordination game," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(4), pages 667-688, December.
    4. Dominiak, Adam & Eichberger, Jürgen, 2021. "Games in context: Equilibrium under ambiguity for belief functions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 125-159.
    5. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard Schipper, 2008. "Granny Versus Game Theorist: Ambiguity in Experimental Games," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 333-362, March.
    6. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2009. "Ambiguity and social interaction," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 355-379, April.
    7. Péter Bayer & Ani Guerdjikova, 2020. "Optimism leads to optimality: Ambiguity in network formation," Working Papers hal-03005107, HAL.
    8. David Kelsey & Tigran Melkonyan, 2018. "Contests with ambiguity," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 1148-1169.
    9. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2009. "Ambiguity and social interaction," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(2), pages 355-379, April.
    10. Jürgen Eichberger & David Kelsey, 2014. "Optimism And Pessimism In Games," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(2), pages 483-505, May.
    11. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Olivier L’Haridon, 2013. "La rationalité à l'épreuve de l'économie comportementale," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(2), pages 35-89.
    12. Greiner, Ben, 2023. "Strategic uncertainty aversion in bargaining — Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    13. repec:awi:wpaper:0448 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Dominiak, Adam & Lee, Min Suk, 2017. "Coherent Dempster–Shafer equilibrium and ambiguous signals," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 42-54.
    15. Frank Riedel & Linda Sass, 2014. "Ellsberg games," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 469-509, April.
    16. Adam Dominiak & Ani Guerdjikova, 2021. "Special Issue on Ambiguity and Strategic Interactions in Honor of Jürgen Eichberger," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 301-307, May.
    17. Eichberger, Jürgen & Kelsey, David, 2007. "Ambiguity," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 07-50, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
      • Eichberger, Jürgen & Kelsey, David, 2007. "Ambiguity," Papers 07-50, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    18. Marco Rojas & Damián Vergara, 2021. "Ambiguity and long-run cooperation in strategic games," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 1077-1098.
    19. Chateauneuf, Alain & Eichberger, Jurgen & Grant, Simon, 2007. "Choice under uncertainty with the best and worst in mind: Neo-additive capacities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 538-567, November.
    20. Calford, Evan M., 2020. "Uncertainty aversion in game theory: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 720-734.
    21. Carmela Di Mauro & Massimo Finocchiaro Castro, 2011. "Kindness, confusion, or … ambiguity?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 611-633, November.
    22. Lo, Kin Chung, 2009. "Correlated Nash equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 722-743, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ambiguity ; coordination games ; experiments ; traveller’s dilemma ; matching pennies ; optimism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    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:mnh:spaper:2027. 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: Katharina Rautenberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfmande.html .

    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.