Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The Minority of Three-Game: An Experimental and Theoretical Analysis

Contents:

Author Info

  • Thorsten Chmura

    (Department of Economics, University of Munich)

  • Werner Güth

    () (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group)

  • Thomas Pitz

    (Nottingham University Business School China)

  • Anthony Ziegelmeyer

    (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group)

Abstract

We report experimental and theoretical results on the minority of three-game where three players have to choose one of two alternatives independently and the most rewarding alternative is the one chosen by a single player. This coordination game has many asymmetric equilibria in pure strategies that are non strict and payoff-asymmetric, and a unique symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium in which each player's behavior is based on the toss of a fair coin. We show that such a straightforward behavior is predicted by Harsanyi and Selten's (1988) equilibrium selection theory as well as alternative solution concepts like impulse balance equilibrium and sampling equilibrium. Our results indicate that participants rely on various decision rules, and that only a quarter of them decide according to the toss of a fair coin. Reinforcement learning is the most successful decision rule as it describes best the behavior of about a third of our participants.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: http://pubdb.wiwi.uni-jena.de/pdf/wp_2010_071.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics in its series Jena Economic Research Papers with number 2010-071.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 19 Oct 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-071

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Carl-Zeiss-Strasse 3, 07743 JENA
Phone: +049 3641/ 9 43000
Fax: +049 3641/ 9 43000
Web page: http://www.jenecon.de
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Coordination; Minority game; Mixed strategy; Learning models; Experiments;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Sethi, Rajiv, 2000. "Stability of Equilibria in Games with Procedurally Rational Players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 85-104, July.
  2. John Duffy & Ed Hopkins, 2010. "Learning, Information and Sorting in Market Entry Games: Theory and Evidence," Levine's Working Paper Archive 506439000000000355, David K. Levine.
  3. Selten, R. & Chmura, T. & Pitz, T. & Kube, S. & Schreckenberg, M., 2007. "Commuters route choice behaviour," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 394-406, February.
  4. Reinhard Selten & Thorsten Chmura, 2005. "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2x2 Games," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers bgse33_2005, University of Bonn, Germany.
  5. Erev, Ido & Roth, Alvin E, 1998. "Predicting How People Play Games: Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games with Unique, Mixed Strategy Equilibria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 848-81, September.
  6. Sebastian Goerg & Reinhard Selten, 2009. "Experimental investigation of stationary concepts in cyclic duopoly games," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 253-271, September.
  7. Osborne, M-J & Rubinstein, A, 1997. "Games with Procedurally Rational Players," Papers 4-97, Tel Aviv.
  8. Chmura, T. & Pitz, T., 2006. "Successful strategies in repeated minority games," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 363(2), pages 477-480.
  9. Dennis A. V. Dittrich & Werner Güth & Martin Kocher & Paul Pezanis-Christou, . "Loss aversion and learning to bid," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2005-03, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    • Dennis A. V. Dittrich & Werner Güth & Martin G. Kocher & Paul Pezanis‐Christou, 2012. "Loss Aversion and Learning to Bid," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 79(314), pages 226-257, 04.
  10. Reinhard Selten & Thorsten Chmura & Sebastian J. Goerg, 2011. "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2 X 2 Games: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 1041-44, April.
  11. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Friedman, Daniel, 1997. "Individual Learning in Normal Form Games: Some Laboratory Results," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 46-76, April.
  12. Giulio Bottazzi & Giovanna Devetag, 2007. "Competition and coordination in experimental minority games," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 241-275, June.
  13. Ho, Teck H. & Camerer, Colin F. & Chong, Juin-Kuan, 2007. "Self-tuning experience weighted attraction learning in games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 177-198, March.
  14. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  15. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Giovanna Devetag & Francesca Pancotto & Thomas Brenner, 2011. "The Minority Game Unpacked: Coordination and Competition in a Team-based Experiment," CEEL Working Papers 1102, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-071

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Markus Pasche).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.