On the Origin of Convention: Evidence from Coordination Games.

The authors report the results of a coordination game experiment. The experiment carefully distinguishes between conventions based on labels and conventions based on populations. Their labels treatments investigate the abstraction assumptions that underlie the concept of a strategy, while their population treatments investigate the attraction of alternative mutually consistent ways to play under adaptive behavior. The authors observe conventions emerging in communities with one population and labels and with two populations and no labels, but the most effective treatment is two labeled populations. They estimate logistic response learning models for individual subject behavior. Of the models considered, a version of exponential fictitious play fits the authors' data best. Copyright 1997 by Royal Economic Society.