IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/swe/wpaper/2021-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coordination in the Network Minimum Game

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Hoelzemann

    (Department of Economics, University of Toronto)

  • Hongyi Li

    (School of Economics, UNSW Business School)

Abstract

Motivated by the problem of organizational design, we study coordination in the network minimum game: a version of the minimum-effort game where players are connected by a directed network. We show experimentally that acyclic networks such as hierarchies are most conducive to successful coordination. Introducing a single link to complete a network cycle may drastically inhibit coordination. Further, acyclic networks enable resilient coordination: initial coordination failure is often overcome (exacerbated) after repeated play in acyclic (cyclic) networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Hoelzemann & Hongyi Li, 2021. "Coordination in the Network Minimum Game," Discussion Papers 2021-02, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    • Handle: RePEc:swe:wpaper:2021-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/RePEc/papers/2021-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Gary Charness & Francesco Feri & Miguel A. Meléndez‐Jiménez & Matthias Sutter, 2014. "Experimental Games on Networks: Underpinnings of Behavior and Equilibrium Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(5), pages 1615-1670, September.
    4. Gary S. Becker & Kevin M. Murphy, 1994. "The Division of Labor, Coordination Costs, and Knowledge," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 299-322, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Sah, Raaj Kumar & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1986. "The Architecture of Economic Systems: Hierarchies and Polyarchies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 716-727, September.
    6. Van Huyck, John B. & Gillette, Ann B. & Battalio, Raymond C., 1992. "Credible assignments in coordination games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 606-626, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Yann Bramoullé & Andrea Galeotti & Brian Rogers, 2016. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks," Post-Print hal-03572533, HAL.
    9. Jordi Brandts & David J. Cooper, 2006. "A Change Would Do You Good .... An Experimental Study on How to Overcome Coordination Failure in Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 669-693, June.
    10. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    11. 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.
    12. Roberto A. Weber & Colin F. Camerer, 2003. "Cultural Conflict and Merger Failure: An Experimental Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(4), pages 400-415, April.
    13. Brandts Jordi & Macleod W. Bentley, 1995. "Equilibrium Selection in Experimental Games with Recommended Play," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 36-63, October.
    14. Roberto Weber & Colin Camerer & Marc Knez, 2004. "Timing and Virtual Observability in Ultimatum Bargaining and “Weak Link” Coordination Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(1), pages 25-48, February.
    15. Roberto Weber & Colin Camerer & Yuval Rottenstreich & Marc Knez, 2001. "The Illusion of Leadership: Misattribution of Cause in Coordination Games," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(5), pages 582-598, October.
    16. Bramoulle, Yann & Galeotti, Andrea & Rogers, Brian (ed.), 2016. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199948277.
    17. Keser, Claudia & Ehrhart, Karl-Martin & Berninghaus, Siegfried K., 1998. "Coordination and local interaction: experimental evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 269-275, March.
    18. Martin Dufwenberg & Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Gender & Coordination," Springer Books, in: Rami Zwick & Amnon Rapoport (ed.), Experimental Business Research, chapter 0, pages 253-262, Springer.
    19. Cassar, Alessandra, 2007. "Coordination and cooperation in local, random and small world networks: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 209-230, February.
    20. Anderson, Simon P. & Goeree, Jacob K. & Holt, Charles A., 2001. "Minimum-Effort Coordination Games: Stochastic Potential and Logit Equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 177-199, February.
    21. Wouter Dessein & Tano Santos, 2006. "Adaptive Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(5), pages 956-985, October.
    22. Berninghaus, Siegfried K. & Ehrhart, Karl-Martin & Keser, Claudia, 2002. "Conventions and Local Interaction Structures: Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 177-205, May.
    23. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2016. "Quantal Response Equilibrium:A Stochastic Theory of Games," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10743.
    24. Blume, Andreas & Ortmann, Andreas, 2007. "The effects of costless pre-play communication: Experimental evidence from games with Pareto-ranked equilibria," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 274-290, January.
    25. Roy Chen & Yan Chen, 2011. "The Potential of Social Identity for Equilibrium Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2562-2589, October.
    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. Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2016. "Disentangling Social Capital: Lab-in-the-Field Evidence on Coordination, Networks, and Cooperation," Artefactual Field Experiments 00565, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. Fehr, Dietmar, 2017. "Costly communication and learning from failure in organizational coordination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 106-122.
    3. Feldhaus, Christoph & Rockenbach, Bettina & Zeppenfeld, Christopher, 2020. "Inequality in minimum-effort coordination," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 341-370.
    4. Lu Dong & Maria Montero & Alex Possajennikov, 2018. "Communication, leadership and coordination failure," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(4), pages 557-584, June.
    5. Giovanna Devetag & Andreas Ortmann, 2007. "When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(3), pages 331-344, September.
    6. Arno Riedl & Ingrid M. T. Rohde & Martin Strobel, 2016. "Efficient Coordination in Weakest-Link Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(2), pages 737-767.
    7. Zhang, Yang & Du, Xiaomin, 2017. "Network effects on strategic interactions: A laboratory approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 133-146.
    8. Cason, Timothy N. & Savikhin, Anya C. & Sheremeta, Roman M., 2012. "Behavioral spillovers in coordination games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 233-245.
    9. Luke A. Boosey & Christopher Brown, 2021. "Contests with Network Externalities: Theory & Evidence," Working Papers wp2021_07_02, Department of Economics, Florida State University.
    10. Kriss, Peter H. & Blume, Andreas & Weber, Roberto A., 2016. "Coordination with decentralized costly communication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 225-241.
    11. Cason, Timothy N. & Lau, Sau-Him Paul & Mui, Vai-Lam, 2019. "Prior interaction, identity, and cooperation in the Inter-group Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 613-629.
    12. Alejandro Caparrós & Esther Blanco & Philipp Buchenauer & Michael Finus, 2020. "Team Formation in Coordination Games with Fixed Neighborhoods," Working Papers 2004, Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos (IPP), CSIC.
    13. Feldhaus, Christoph & Rockenbach, Bettina & Zeppenfeld, Christopher, 2020. "Inequality in minimum-effort coordination," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224650, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Andreas Blume, 2011. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: Pre-Play Communication with Foregone Costly Messages," Working Paper 438, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2011.
    15. Andreas Blume & Peter H. Kriss & Roberto A. Weber, 2017. "Pre-play communication with forgone costly messages: experimental evidence on forward induction," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(2), pages 368-395, June.
    16. Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Weitzel, Utz & Westbrock, Bastian, 2024. "Social preferences on networks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    17. Banerjee, Simanti & Cason, Timothy N. & de Vries, Frans P. & Hanley, Nick, 2017. "Transaction costs, communication and spatial coordination in Payment for Ecosystem Services Schemes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 68-89.
    18. Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Weitzel, Utz, 2012. "Network structure and strategic investments: An experimental analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 898-920.
    19. Maoliang Ye & Jie Zheng & Plamen Nikolov & Sam Asher, 2020. "One Step at a Time: Does Gradualism Build Coordination?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 113-129, January.
    20. Bronchal, Adrià, 2023. "Better the devil you know: The effects of group identity uncertainty on coordination efficiency," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 634-656.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    organizational design; weak-link game; minimum-effort game; coordination failure; quantal response equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:swe:wpaper:2021-02. 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: Hongyi Li (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/senswau.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.