Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Alempaki, Despoina
• Colman, Andrew M.
• Kölle, Felix
• Loomes, Graham
• Pulford, Briony D.

Titel

Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games

Ist Teil von

• Experimental economics : a journal of the Economic Science Association, 2022-04, Vol.25 (2), p.656-679

Ort / Verlag

New York: Springer US

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We examine strategic sophistication using eight two-person 3 × 3 one-shot games. To facilitate strategic thinking, we design a ‘structured’ environment where subjects first assign subjective values to the payoff pairs and state their beliefs about their counterparts’ probable strategies, before selecting their own strategies in light of those deliberations. Our results show that a majority of strategy choices are inconsistent with the equilibrium prediction, and that only just over half of strategy choices constitute best responses to subjects’ stated beliefs. Allowing for other-regarding considerations increases best responding significantly, but the increase is rather small. We further compare patterns of strategies with those made in an ‘unstructured’ environment in which subjects are not specifically directed to think strategically. Our data suggest that structuring the pre-decision deliberation process does not affect strategic sophistication.