Focal points revisited: Team reasoning, the principle of insufficient reason and cognitive hierarchy theory

Nicholas Bardsley and Aljaz Ule

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017, vol. 133, issue C, 74-86

Abstract: It is well-established that people can coordinate their behaviour on focal points in games with multiple equilibria, but it is not firmly established how. Much coordination game data might be explained by team reasoning, a departure from individualistic choice theory. However, a less exotic explanation is also available based on best-responding to uniform randomisation. We test these two accounts experimentally, using novel games which distinguish their predictions. The results are inconsistent with best-responding to randomisation but consistent with team reasoning as the modal behaviour, though there is also unexplained heterogeneity. Increasing the difficulty of the coordination tasks produces some behaviour suggestive of response to randomisation, but this is a minor feature of the data.

Keywords: Coordination; Team reasoning; Focal points; Bounded rationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268116302165
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Focal Points Revisited: Team Reasoning, the Principle of Insufficient Reason and Cognitive Hierarchy Theory (2014)
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:jeborg:v:133:y:2017:i:c:p:74-86

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.10.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().