Strategic behavior and social outcomes in a bottleneck queue: experimental evidence

Jesper Breinbjerg (), Alexander Sebald () and Lars Peter Østerdal
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Jesper Breinbjerg: University of Southern Denmark

Review of Economic Design, 2016, vol. 20, issue 3, No 3, 207-236

Abstract: Abstract We theoretically and experimentally study the differential incentive effects of three well known queue disciplines in a strategic environment in which a bottleneck facility opens and impatient players decide when to arrive. For a class of three-player games, we derive equilibrium arrivals under the first-in-first-out (FIFO), last-in-first-out (LIFO), and service-in-random-order (SIRO) queue disciplines and compare these predictions to outcomes from a laboratory experiment. In line with our theoretical predictions, we find that people arrive with greater dispersion when participating under the LIFO discipline, whereas they tend to arrive immediately under FIFO and SIRO. As a consequence, shorter waiting times are obtained under LIFO as compared to FIFO and SIRO. However, while our theoretical predictions admit higher welfare under LIFO, this is not recovered experimentally as the queue disciplines provide similar welfare outcomes.

Keywords: Queue disciplines; Congestion; Equilibrium; Experiments; Fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D62 D63 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Working Paper: Strategic Behavior and Social Outcomes in a Bottleneck Queue: Experimental Evidence (2014)
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DOI: 10.1007/s10058-016-0190-4

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