It is known that there are uncoupled learning heuristics leading to Nash equilibrium in all finite games. Why should players use such learning heuristics and where could they come from? We show that there is no uncoupled learning heuristic leading to Nash equilibrium in all finite games that a...

Recently there has been much work on learning in games. However, learning usually means learning about behavior of opponents rather than learning about the game as such. Here we test in an experiment whether players in a repeated encounter can learn the payoff structures of their opponents by...

We present a formal model of symmetric n-firm Cournot oligopoly with a heterogeneous population of optimizers and imitators. Imitators mimic the output decision of the most successful firms of the previous round a la Vega-Redondo (1997). Optimizers play a myopic best response to the opponents'...

Recently there has been much work on learning in games. However, learning usually means "learning about behavior of opponents" rather than "learning about the game" as such. Here we test in an experiment whether players in a repeated encounter can learn the payoff structures of their opponents...

We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule "imitate if-better'' can hardly be beaten by any strategy. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable in the sense that there is no strategy that can exploit imitation as a...