Costless pre-play communication has been found to effectively facilitate coordination and enhance efficiency in games with Pareto-ranked equilibria. We report an experiment in which two groups ...compete in a weakest-link contest by expending costly efforts. Allowing intra-group communication leads to more aggressive competition and greater coordination than control treatments without any communication. On the other hand, allowing inter-group communication leads to less destructive competition. As a result, intra-group communication decreases while inter-group communication increases payoffs. Our experiment thus provides an example of an environment where communication can either enhance or damage efficiency. This contrasts sharply with experimental findings from public goods and other coordination games, where communication always enhances efficiency and often leads to socially optimal outcomes.
Agricultural producer participation and spatial coordination of land use decisions are key components for enhancing the effective delivery of ecosystem services from private land. However, inducing ...participation in Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes for coordinating land management choices is challenging from a policy design perspective owing to transaction costs associated with participation. This paper employs a laboratory experiment to investigate the impact of such costs on participation and land use in the context of an Agglomeration Bonus (AB) scheme. The AB creates a coordination game with multiple Nash equilibria related to alternative spatially-coordinated land use patterns. The experiment varies transaction costs between two levels (high and low), which affects the risks and payoffs of coordinating on the different equilibria. Additionally, an option to communicate is implemented between neighbors arranged on a local network to facilitate spatial coordination. Results indicate a significant difference in participation and performance under high and low transaction costs, with lower uptake and performance when transaction costs are high. These effects are, however, impacted by transaction costs faced in the past. Communication improves both AB participation rates and performance with the effect being greater for participants facing high transaction costs.
Many social dilemmas exhibit nonlinearities and equilibrium outcomes in the interior of the choice space. This paper reports a laboratory experiment studying whether peer punishment promotes socially ...efficient behavior in such environments, which have been ignored in most experimental studies of peer punishment. It compares the effectiveness of peer punishment in a linear public good game to the effectiveness of this decentralized enforcement mechanism in two nonlinear social dilemma games: a piecewise linear public good game and a common pool resource game. While peer punishment improves cooperation in these new environments, the impact of punishment is weaker and takes longer to be effective. This appears to be due to the greater complexity of the nonlinear settings, which makes socially optimal choices more difficult to identify.
Within-group communication in competitive coordination games has been shown to increase competition between groups and lower efficiency. This study further explores potentially harmful effects of ...communication, by addressing the questions of (1) asymmetric communication and (2) the endogenous emergence of communication. Our theoretical analysis provides testable hypotheses regarding the effect of communication on competitive behavior and efficiency. We test these predictions using a laboratory experiment. The experiment shows that although asymmetric communication is not as harmful as symmetric communication, it leads to more aggressive competition and lower efficiency relative to the case when neither group can communicate. Moreover, groups vote to endogenously establish communication channels even though they would earn higher payoffs if jointly they chose to restrict within-group communication.
We report laboratory experiments that use new, visually oriented software to explore the dynamics of 3 × 3 games with intransitive best responses. Each moment, each player is matched against the ...entire population, here 8 human subjects. A "heat map" offers instantaneous feedback on current profit opportunities. In the continuous slow adjustment treatment, we see distinct cycles in the population mix. The cycle amplitude, frequency and direction are consistent with the standard learning models. Cycles are more erratic and higher frequency in the instantaneous adjustment treatment. Control treatments (using simultaneous matching in discrete time) replicate previous results that exhibit weak or no cycles. Average play is approximated fairly well by Nash equilibrium, and an alternative point prediction, "TASP" (Time Average of the Shapley Polygon), captures some regularities that Nash equilibrium misses.
Indirect Punishment and Generosity Toward Strangers Ule, Aljaž; Schram, Arthur; Riedl, Arno ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
12/2009, Letnik:
326, Številka:
5960
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Many people incur costs to reward strangers who have been kind to others. Theoretical and experimental evidence suggests that such "indirect rewarding" sustains cooperation between unrelated humans. ...Its emergence is surprising, because rewarders incur costs but receive no immediate benefits. It can prevail in the long run only if rewarders earn higher payoffs than "defectors" who ignore strangers' kindness. We provide experimental evidence regarding the payoffs received by individuals who employ these and other strategies, such as "indirect punishment," by imposing costs on unkind strangers. We find that if unkind strangers cannot be punished, defection earns most. If they can be punished, however, then indirect rewarding earns most. Indirect punishment plays this important role, even if it gives a low payoff and is rarely implemented.
This study explores the tension between the standard economic theory of preference and nonstandard theories of preference that are motivated by an underlying theory of framing. A simple experiment ...fails to measure a known preference. The divergence of the measured preference from the known preference reflects a mistake, arising from some subjects’ misconception of the game form. We conclude that choice data should not be granted an unqualified interpretation of preference revelation. Mistakes in choices obscured by a possible error at the foundation of the theory of framing can masquerade as having been produced by nonstandard preferences.
Create a culture of experiments in environmental programs Ferraro, Paul J.; Cherry, Todd L.; Shogren, Jason F. ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
08/2023, Letnik:
381, Številka:
6659
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Organizations need a better “learning by doing” approach
An understanding of cause and effect is central to the design of effective environmental policies and programs. But environmental scientists ...and practitioners typically rely on field experience, case studies, and retrospective evaluations of programs that were not designed to generate evidence about cause and effect. Using such methods can lead to ineffective or even counterproductive programs. To help strengthen inferences about cause and effect, environmental organizations could rely more on formal experimentation within their programs, which would leverage the power of science while maintaining a “learning by doing” approach. Although formal experimentation is a cornerstone of science and is increasingly embedded in nonenvironmental social programs, it is virtually absent in environmental programs. We highlight key obstacles to such experimentation and suggest opportunities to overcome them.
In a trust game experiment, we elicited choices using either the so-called game or strategy method. While the two methods yield similar rates of trust, the strategy method reveals a significantly ...lower rate of trustworthiness.
Nous étudions les enchères sous différentes règles d’entrée. En pratique, les individus choisissent eux-mêmes de participer aux enchères et les réglementations exigent souvent qu’ils remplissent ...certains critères de qualification. Notre expérience évalue le rôle joué par l’entrée volontaire et par les exigences financières dans la fréquence des offres excessives et des faillites, qui sont très répandues dans les enchères à valeur commune. Nous montrons que l’entrée volontaire amplifie les offres excessives et accroît les taux de faillite. L’entrée par qualification n’a qu’un impact modeste sur les offres excessives. Cette étude apporte de nouveaux enseignements par rapport aux expériences existantes puisque dans ces dernières, les sujets sont en général placés dans les enchères de manière exogène. JEL Codes: D44, D03, C92.
PDF
