Identifying the Reasons for Coordination Failure in a Laboratory Experiment

We investigate the effect of absence of common knowledge on the outcomes of coordination games in a laboratory experiment.Using cognitive types, we can explain coordination failure in pure coordination games while differentiating between coordination failure due to first- and higher-order beliefs.In our experiment, around 76% of the subjects have chosen the payoff-dominant equilibrium strategy despite the absence of common knowledge. However, 9% of the players had first-order beliefs that lead to coordination failure and another 9% exhibited coordination failure due to higher-order beliefs. Furthermore, we compare our results with predictions of commonly used models of higher-order beliefs