Teaching Nash Equilibrium and Strategy Dominance: A Classroom Experiment on the Beauty Contest

Virtudes Alba Fernández (), Pablo Brañas-Garza (), Francisca Jiménez Jiménez () and Javier Rodero Cosano
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Virtudes Alba Fernández: Universidad de Jaén
Francisca Jiménez Jiménez: Universidad de Jaén., http://www.ujaen.es

No E2003/47, Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces from Centro de Estudios Andaluces

Abstract: The aim of this investigation is to display how the use of classroom experiments may be a good pedagogical tool to teach the Nash equilibrium (NE) concept. The basic game for our purposes is a repeated version of the Beauty Contest Game (BCG), a simple guessing game whose repetition lets students react to other players’ choices and to converge iteratively to the equilibrium solution. We performed this experiment with undergraduate students without any previous knowledge about game theory. After four rounds, we observed in all groups a clear decreasing tendency in the average chosen number. So, our findings prove that, by playing a repeated BCG, students quickly learn how to reach the NE solution.

Keywords: Classroom Experiments; Beauty Contest Game; Teaching; Nash Equilibrium. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A22 C99 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-mic
Date: Written
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