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Endogenous Communication and Tacit Coordination in Market Entry Games - An explorative experimental study

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This paper explores experimentally the effects of costly communication possibilities in market entry games. It is shown that these effects depend on whether entry costs are symmetric or asymmetric. In the former, but not the latter case, communication possibilities increase coordination success substantially and are likely to generate inferior outcomes for consumers. Furthermore, cost asymmetries provide a tacit coordination cue that is robust to changes in the game and is used by experienced players as a substitute to communication. It is also shown that although communication opens up for aggressive market domination strategies, such strategies are not used often successful.

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  • Andersson, Ola & Carlsson, Hans & Holm, Håkan, 2006. "Endogenous Communication and Tacit Coordination in Market Entry Games - An explorative experimental study," Working Papers 2006:12, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2006_012
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    Cited by:

    1. Laurent Denant-Boèmont & Sabrina Hammiche, 2009. "Public Transit Capacity and Users' Choice: AnExperiment on Downs-Thomson Paradox," Post-Print halshs-00406223, HAL.
    2. Ola Andersson & Hakan J. Holm, 2013. "Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden," Games, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-11, August.
    3. Bigoni, Maria & Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Le Coq, Chloé & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2008. "Fines, Leniency and Rewards in Antitrust: An Experiment," Working Paper Series 738, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 06 Aug 2009.
    4. Andersson, Ola & Wengström, Erik, 2012. "Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 207-219.
    5. Timothy N. Cason & Roman M. Sheremeta & Jingjing Zhang, 2017. "Asymmetric and endogenous within-group communication in competitive coordination games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(4), pages 946-972, December.
    6. Andersson, Ola & Holm, Håkan J., 2010. "Free-riding on Communication: An Experimental Study," Working Papers 2010:10, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 03 Mar 2011.
    7. Kriss, Peter H. & Blume, Andreas & Weber, Roberto A., 2016. "Coordination with decentralized costly communication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 225-241.
    8. Timothy N. Cason & Roman M. Sheremeta & Jingjing Zhang, 2015. "Asymmetric and Endogenous Communication in Competition between Groups," Working Papers 15-01, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    9. Christer Andersson & Ola Andersson & Tommy Andersson, 2013. "Sealed bid auctions versus ascending bid auctions: an experimental study," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 17(1), pages 1-16, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Communication; Market Entry; Coordination;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

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