An Experiment on Intercultural Tacit Coordination - Preliminary Report

This report presents the results of a replication, with 199 culturally-diverse subjects, of Thomas Schelling’s (1957) experiments on tacit coordination. Section 1 introduces the concept of focal point equilibrium selection in tacit one-shot symmetric pure coordination games, as presented by Schelling in his classic article; it then traces its subsequent exploration through experimental research, shows how it has been explained, particularly in terms of culture, and relates that kind of explanation to the experimental and null hypotheses of the present study and its associated predictions. Section 2 describes the design of the intercultural tacit coordination experiment, and section 3 the results. Finally, section 4 presents a very preliminary discussion of the implications of the experiment’s results in terms of the cultural explanation of focal point equilibrium selection.