Reinforcement learning and stochastic fictitious play are apparent rivals as models of human learning. They embody quite different assumptions about the processing of information and optimization. This paper compares their properties and finds that they are far more similar than were thought. In...

In a model of dynamic duopoly, optimal price policies are characterized assuming consumers learn adaptively about the relative quality of the two products. A contrast is made between belief-based and reinforcement learning. Under reinforcement learning, consumers can become locked into the habit...

Previous data from experiments on market entry games, N-player games where each player faces a choice between entering a market and staying out, appear inconsistent with either mixed or pure Nash equilibria. Here we show that, in this class of game, learning theory predicts sorting, that is, in...

This paper investigates the properties of the most common form of reinforcement learning (the "basic model" of Erev and Roth, American Economic Review, 88, 848-881, 1998). Stochastic approximation theory has been used to analyse the local stability of fixed points under this learning process....

A brief survey of the economics of price dispersion, written for the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition.

In this paper, we investigate whether, because of differing social organisation, the effect of greater equality may have opposing effects on economic growth in different societies. We investigate a simple endogenous growth model where agents care about their status. This is determined by their...

We investigate the relationship between the continuous time best response dynamic, its perturbed version and evolutionary dynamics in relation to mixed strategy equilibria. We find that as the level of noise approaches zero, the perturbed best response dynamic has the same quantitative...

We report experiments designed to test the theoretical possibility, first discovered by Shapley (1964), that in some games learning fails to converge to any equilibrium, either in terms of marginal frequencies or of average play. Subjects played repeatedly in fixed pairings one of two 3 × 3...

This paper analyses comparative statics for two classes of n-player games of incomplete information with continuous action spaces. The two classes are defined by differences in the payoff and behaviour of the weakest type: the lowest value bidder or highest cost firm. We show that in ``weakly...

This paper applies recent advances in the theory of learning to the analysis of consumer behaviour in a dynamic duopoly. Nash equilibrium play is characterised when consumers learn adaptively about the relative quality of the two products. A constrast is made between belief-based and...