Logical omniscience at the laboratory

Ralph-C Bayer () and Ludovic Renou

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2016, vol. 64, issue C, 41-49

Abstract: This paper investigates the ability of individuals to make complex chains of reasoning, similar to those underlying the logic of iterated deletion of dominated strategies. Controlling for other-regarding preferences and beliefs about the rationality of others, we show, in the laboratory, that the ability of individuals to perform complex chains of iterative reasoning is better than previously thought. We conclude this from comparing our results with those from studies that use the same game without controlling for confounding factors. Subjects were able to perform about two to three iterations of reasoning on average as measured by our version of the Red-Hat Puzzle.

Keywords: Iterative reasoning; Depth of reasoning; Logical omniscience; Rationality; Experiments; Other-regarding preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221480431630057X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:64:y:2016:i:c:p:41-49

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2016.06.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().