Error cascades in observational learning: An experiment on the Chinos game

Francesco Feri, Miguel Meléndez-Jiménez (), Giovanni Ponti () and Fernando Vega-Redondo

Games and Economic Behavior, 2011, vol. 73, issue 1, 136-146

Abstract: The paper reports an experimental study based on a variant of the popular Chinos game, which is used as a simple but paradigmatic instance of observational learning. There are three players, arranged in sequence, each of which wins a fixed price if she manages to guess the total number of coins lying in everybody's hands. Our evidence shows that, despite the remarkable frequency of equilibrium outcomes, deviations from optimal play are also significant. And when such deviations occur, we find that, for any given player position, the probability of a mistake is increasing in the probability of a mistake of her predecessors. This is what we call an error cascade, which we measure by evaluating the (heterogeneous) Quantal Response Equilibrium which better suits our data. We also check the robustness of our findings when we allow for belief heterogeneity by applying Kübler and Weizsäcker's (2004) cognitive frame of limited depth of reasoning.

Keywords: Positional; learning; Error; cascades (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825610001648
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Error Cascades in Observational Learning: An Experiment on the Chinos Game (2008)
Working Paper: Error Cascades in Observational Learning: An Experiment on the Chinos Game (2008)
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:gamebe:v:73:y:2011:i:1:p:136-146

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().