The Minority of Three-Game: An Experimental and Theoretical Analysis

Thorsten Chmura (), Werner Güth (), Thomas Pitz and Anthony Ziegelmeyer
Additional contact information
Werner Güth: Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group, Postal: Kahlaische Straße 10, D-07745 Jena, Germany
Thomas Pitz: Nottingham University Business School China

No 2010-071, Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

Abstract: We report experimental and theoretical results on the minority of three-game where three players have to choose one of two alternatives independently and the most rewarding alternative is the one chosen by a single player. This coordination game has many asymmetric equilibria in pure strategies that are non strict and payoff-asymmetric, and a unique symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium in which each player's behavior is based on the toss of a fair coin. We show that such a straightforward behavior is predicted by Harsanyi and Selten's (1988) equilibrium selection theory as well as alternative solution concepts like impulse balance equilibrium and sampling equilibrium. Our results indicate that participants rely on various decision rules, and that only a quarter of them decide according to the toss of a fair coin. Reinforcement learning is the most successful decision rule as it describes best the behavior of about a third of our participants.

Keywords: Coordination; Minority game; Mixed strategy; Learning models; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-10-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2010/wp_2010_071.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Minority of Three-Game: An Experimental and Theoretical Analysis (2011)
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:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-071

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Markus Pasche ().