When and Why? A Critical Survey on Coordination Failure in the Laboratory

Giovanna Devetag and Andreas Ortmann

No 605, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: Coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria have attracted major theoretical attention over the past two decades. Two early path-breaking sets of experimental studies were widely interpreted as suggesting that coordination failure is a common phenomenon in the laboratory. We identify the major determinants that seem to affect the incidence, and/or emergence, of coordination failure in the lab and review critically the existing experimental studies on coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria since that early evidence emerged. We conclude that there are many ways to engineer coordination successes.

Keywords: coordination games; Pareto-ranked equilibria; payoff-asymmetric equilibria; staghunt games; optimization incentives; robustness; coordination; coordination failure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory (2007)
Working Paper: When and Why? A Critical Survey on Coordination Failure in the Laboratory (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpce:0605

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