Costless pre-play communication has been found to effectively facilitate coordination and enhance efficiency by increasing individual payoffs in games with Pareto-ranked equilibria. We report an experiment in which two groups compete in a weakest-link contest by expending costly efforts....

This paper examines whether and how communication can help groups solve coordination and free-rider problems when they compete with another group for a public-good prize. We find that when group members make an anonymous individual decision on whether or not to contribute to the group success,...