This paper considers a two-player game of strategic experimentation with competition. Each agent faces a two-armed bandit problem where she continually chooses between her private risky arm and a common, safe arm. Each agent has exclusive access to her private arm. However, the common arm can...

We report experiments designed to test between Nash equilibria that are stable and unstable under learning. The “TASP” (Time Average of the Shapley Polygon) gives a precise prediction about what happens when there is divergence from equilibrium under fictitious play like learning processes....

Mixed Nash equilibria are a cornerstone of game theory, but their empirical relevance has always been controversial. We study in the laboratory two games whose unique NE is in completely mixed strategies; other treatments include the matching protocol (pairwise random vs population...

We use the Vote-with-the-Wallet game (VWG) to model socially or environmentally responsible consumption, an increasingly relevant but still under-researched phenomenon. Based on a theoretical model outlining game equilibria and the parametric interval of the related multiplayer prisoners'...

This is a survey and discussion of work covering both formal game theory and experimental gaming prior to 1991. It is a useful preliminary introduction to the considerable change and emphasis which has taken place since that time where dynamics, learning, and local optimization have challenged...

In many experiments, the Nash equilibrium concept seems not to predict well. One reason may be that players have non-selfish preferences over outcomes. As a consequence, even when they are told what the material payoffs of the game are, mutual knowledge of preferences may not be satisfied. We...

This paper examines strategic adaptation in participants’ behavior conditional on the type of their opponent. Participants played a constant-sum game for 100 rounds against each of three pattern-detecting computer algorithms designed to exploit regularities in human behavior such as...

This paper aspires to fill a conspicuous gap in the literature regarding learning in games — the absence of empirical verification of learning rules involving pattern recognition. Weighted fictitious play is extended to detect two-period patterns in opponents’ behavior and to comply with the...

We test infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma games with random continuation in the laboratory to capture the effect of strategic risk on co-operation. We propose a criterion building on Harsanyi and Selten's (1988) risk dominance concept and motivate it by three heuristic principles. Our...

Game theorists typically assume that changing a game's payoff levels - by adding the same constant to, or subtracting it from, all payoffs - should not affect behavior. While this invariance is an implication of the theory when payoffs mirror expected utilities, it is an empirical question when...