How Salient is an Equal but Inefficient Outcome in a Coordination Situation? Some Experimental Evidence

We consider coordination situations with a conflict of interest, and experimentally vary the inefficiency of an equal earnings equilibrium, as well as the number of efficient and unequal earnings equilibria. We observe that equality, as long it is not extremely inefficient, remains very salient, and primarily because it offers players a way to avoid a coordination failure in selecting between the efficient unequal earnings equilibria, and less because subjects have a strong inherent preference for equality.