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Coordination and Self-Organization in Minority Games: Experimental Evidence

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  • Giulio Bottazzi
  • Giovanna Devetag

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. At the individual level, a substantial portion of subjects exhibit 'inertial' behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Giulio Bottazzi & Giovanna Devetag, 2002. "Coordination and Self-Organization in Minority Games: Experimental Evidence," ROCK Working Papers 019, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 12 Jun 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:trt:rockwp:019
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    Cited by:

    1. Kets, W., 2007. "The Minority Game : An Economics Perspective," Other publications TiSEM 65d52a6a-b27d-45a9-93a7-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Paolo Laureti & Peter Ruch & Joseph Wakeling & Yi-Cheng Zhang, 2004. "The Interactive Minority Game: a Web based investigation of human market interactions," Experimental 0402004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Laureti, Paolo & Ruch, Peter & Wakeling, Joseph & Zhang, Yi-Cheng, 2004. "The Interactive Minority Game: a Web-based investigation of human market interactions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 331(3), pages 651-659.
    4. Renault, Jérôme & Scarlatti, Sergio & Scarsini, Marco, 2008. "Discounted and finitely repeated minority games with public signals," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 44-74, July.
    5. Dirk Helbing & Martin Schönhof & Hans-Ulrich Stark & Janusz A. Hołyst, 2005. "How Individuals Learn To Take Turns: Emergence Of Alternating Cooperation In A Congestion Game And The Prisoner'S Dilemma," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(01), pages 87-116.

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