The Impact of NaïVe Advice and Observational Learning in Beauty-Contest Games

We study the impact of advice or observation on the depth of reasoning in an experimental beauty-contest game. Both sources of information trigger faster convergence to the equilibrium. Yet, we find that subjects who receive naiuml;ve advice outperform uninformed subjects permanently, whereas subjects who observe others' past behavior before making their decision do only have a temporary advantage over uninformed subjects. We show in a simulation that the latter result is due to subjects failing to make the most out of observing others