On the content of focal points

This paper presents a methodology to study the identification of the content of focal points (Schelling 1960). This question is important for external validity and operationalising theories of decision making (e.g. team-reasoning and level-k). Choices implied by different concepts are mapped into Pure Coordination Games: open (Mehta et al. 1994) and closed (Bardsley et al. 2010). Results show that focal points are consistent with well-defined concepts, such as prototypicality, typicality and prominence in open sets but not in closed sets. Furthermore, subjects make different choices between open and closed sets leading to surprisingly more success in open than closed sets.