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...

In this paper we investigate how cognitive ability and character skills influence behavior, success and the evolution of play towards Nash equilibrium in repeated strategic interactions. We study behavior in a p-beauty contest experiment and find striking differences according to cognitive...

We propose an extension to smooth fictitious play and prove that play converges to an ε-Markov perfect equilibrium with probability one in a class of stochastic games known as Markov potential games. We then prove a partial Folk theorem for repeated games under one-period perfect monitoring. We...

A learning rule is uncoupled if a player does not condition his strategy on the opponent's payoffs. It is radically uncoupled if a player does not condition his strategy on the opponent's actions or payoffs. We demonstrate a family of simple, radically uncoupled learning rules whose...

Belief models capable of detecting 2- to 5-period patterns in repeated games by matching the current historical context to similar realizations of past play are presented. The models are implemented in a cognitive framework, ACT-R, and vary in how they implement similarity-based categorization...

In this paper, I analyze stochastic adaptation in finite n-player games played by heterogeneous populations of myopic best repliers, better repliers and imitators. In each period, one individual from each of n populations, one for each player role, is drawn to play and chooses a pure strategy...

In this paper we model an evolutionary process with perpetual random shocks, where individuals sample population-specific strategy and payoff realizations and imitate the most successful behavior. For finite n-player games we prove that in the limit, as the perturbations tend to zero, only...

Theoretical models have had difficulties to account, at the same time, for the most important stylized facts observed in experiments of the Voluntary Contribution Mechanism. A recent approach tackling that gap is Arifovic and Ledyard (2012), which implements social preferences in tandem with an...

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to study beliefs and their relationship to action and strategy choices in finitely and indefinitely repeated prisoners' dilemma games. We find subjects' beliefs about the other player's action are accurate despite some systematic deviations corresponding...