An Experimental Study of Self-Enforcing Coalitions

Karl Jandoc and Ruben Juarez
Additional contact information
Karl Jandoc: University of the Philippines School of Economics, Encarnación Hall, Osmeña cor. Guerrero Sts., Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines
Ruben Juarez: Department of Economics, University of Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way, Saunders Hall 542, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

Games, 2019, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-32

Abstract: We study a model in which agents endowed with power compete for a divisible resource by forming coalitions with other agents. The coalition with the greatest power wins the resource and divides it among its members via proportional sharing. We conduct an economic experiment using this model to investigate possible behavioral factors that may explain deviations from theoretical predictions. The main findings show that agents display rational behavior when forming coalitions, especially when they know that a large proportion of their opponents play myopic strategies from the outset. Over time, however, agents learn to behave more strategically and even more rationally, thus enabling agents to display more of the behavior predicted by the coalition formation model with farsighted agents.

Keywords: coalition formation; power accumulation; self-enforcement; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/10/3/31/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/10/3/31/ (text/html)

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:gam:jgames:v:10:y:2019:i:3:p:31-:d:254013

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().