Steven Scroggin (University of California, San Diego)
Abstract
In repeated games with Nash equilibria in mixed strategies, players optimize by playing randomly. Players are boundedly rational in their randomization eorts. Arguably, they have no internal randomization facility and they fashion external randomization aids from the environment. By conditioning on past play, boundedly rational players exhibit a pattern. The pattern is characterized by cognitive limitations variously called local representativeness, the law of small numbers or the gambler's fallacy. I find one such patternbalance then runsin re-analysis of existing data for matching pennies experiments. While players and play are heterogeneous, the pattern makes prediction plausible. I implement prediction with a non-linear autoregression. Model 1 is a statistically and substantively significant tool for predicting behavior in matching pennies. There is evidence for two other behavioral models, both of which require some sort of sophisticationincluding a model of the opponent as boundedly rational.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: