History as a Coordination Device

Itzhak Gilboa and Rossella Argenziano

No 275700, Foerder Institute for Economic Research Working Papers from Tel-Aviv University > Foerder Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Coordination games often have multiple equilibria. The selection of equilibrium raises the question of belief formation: how do players generate beliefs about the behavior of other players? This paper takes the view that the answer lies in history, that is, in the outcomes of similar coordination games played in the past, possibly by other players. We analyze a simple model in which a large population has to make a simultaneous decision regarding participation in a coup attempt. We assume a dynamic process that faces different populations with such games for randomly selected values of a parameter. We show that history serves as a coordination device, and determines for which values of the parameter a revolution would succeed. We also show that, for certain values of the parameter in question, the limit behavior depends on the way history unfolds, and cannot be determined from a-priori considerations.

Keywords: Financial Economics; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 2006-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/275700/files/8-2006.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: History as a coordination device (2012)
Working Paper: History as a coordination device (2012)
Working Paper: History as a Coordination Device (2010)
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:ags:isfiwp:275700

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.275700

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Foerder Institute for Economic Research Working Papers from Tel-Aviv University > Foerder Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().