Coordination when there are restricted and unrestricted options

One might expect that, in pure coordination games, coordination would become less frequent as the number of options increases. Contrary to this expectation, we report an experiment which found more frequent coordination when the option set was unrestricted than when it was restricted. To try to expl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theory and decision 2017-06, Vol.83 (1), p.107-129
Main Authors: Hargreaves Heap, Shaun P., Rojo Arjona, David, Sugden, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral/Experimental Economics
Coordination
Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods
Economics
Economics and Finance
Finance
Game Theory
Games
Insurance
Management
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Restrictions
Social and Behav. Sciences
Statistics for Business
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Summary:One might expect that, in pure coordination games, coordination would become less frequent as the number of options increases. Contrary to this expectation, we report an experiment which found more frequent coordination when the option set was unrestricted than when it was restricted. To try to explain this result, we develop a method for eliciting the general rules that subjects use to identify salient options in restricted and unrestricted sets. We find that each such rule, if used by all subjects, would generate greater coordination in restricted sets. However, subjects tend to apply different rules to restricted and unrestricted sets.
ISSN:0040-5833
1573-7187
DOI:10.1007/s11238-017-9589-9