How Salient is an Equal but Inefficient Outcome in a Coordination Situation? Some Experimental Evidence

Zoe Bett, Anders Poulsen () and Odile Poulsen
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Zoe Bett: University of East Anglia

No 13-02-R, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: We consider coordination situations with a conflict of interest, and experimentally vary the inefficiency of an equal earnings equilibrium, as well as the number of efficient and unequal earnings equilibria. We observe that equality, as long it is not extremely inefficient, remains very salient, and primarily because it offers players a way to avoid a coordination failure in selecting between the efficient unequal earnings equilibria, and less because subjects have a strong inherent preference for equality.

Keywords: equality; efficiency; coordination; salience; level-k model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C72 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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