Competition as a Coordination Device. Experimental Evidence from a Minimum Effort Coordination Game

Thomas Riechmann and Joachim Weimann
Additional contact information
Thomas Riechmann: University of Magedeburg

Game Theory and Information from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The problem of coordination failure, particularly in 'team production' situations, is central to a large number of mircroeconomic as well as macroeconomic models. As this type of inefficient coordination poses a severe economic problem, there is a need for institutions that foster efficient coordination of individual economic plans. In this paper, we introduce such a rather classical economic institution: competition. In a series of laboratory experiments, we reveal that the true reason for coordination failure is strategic uncertainty, which can be reduced almost completely by introducing a appropriately designed mechanism of (inter-group) competition.

Keywords: coordination failure; team production; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 J33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2004-05-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-exp
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/game/papers/0405/0405011.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Competition as a coordination device: Experimental evidence from a minimum effort coordination game (2008)
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:wpa:wuwpga:0405011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Game Theory and Information from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).