On the content of focal points

David Rojo Arjona
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David Rojo Arjona: University of East Anglia

No 10-16, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: This paper presents a methodology to study the identification of the content of focal points (Schelling 1960). This question is important for external validity and operationalising theories of decision making (e.g. team-reasoning and level-k). Choices implied by different concepts are mapped into Pure Coordination Games: open (Mehta et al. 1994) and closed (Bardsley et al. 2010). Results show that focal points are consistent with well-defined concepts, such as prototypicality, typicality and prominence in open sets but not in closed sets. Furthermore, subjects make different choices between open and closed sets leading to surprisingly more success in open than closed sets.

Keywords: Behavioural game theory; experiments; coordination; framing effects; salience; focal point; typicality; prototypicality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-12-01
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