IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v128y2016icp195-208.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forward induction: Thinking and behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Evdokimov, Piotr
  • Rustichini, Aldo

Abstract

Forward induction (FI) thinking is a theoretical concept in the Nash refinement literature which suggests that earlier moves by a player may communicate his future intentions to other players in the game. Whether and how much players use FI in the laboratory is still an open question. We designed an experiment in which detailed reports were elicited from participants playing a battle of the sexes game with an outside option. Many of the reports show an excellent understanding of FI, and such reports are associated more strongly with FI-like behavior than reports consistent with first mover advantage and other reasoning processes. We find that a small fraction of subjects understands FI but lacks confidence in others. We also explore individual differences in behavior. Our results suggest that FI is relevant for explaining behavior in games.

Suggested Citation

  • Evdokimov, Piotr & Rustichini, Aldo, 2016. "Forward induction: Thinking and behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 195-208.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:128:y:2016:i:c:p:195-208
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.05.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268116300798
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2016.05.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reinhard Selten & Abdolkarim Sadrieh & Klaus Abbink, 1999. "Money Does Not Induce Risk Neutral Behavior, but Binary Lotteries Do even Worse," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 213-252, June.
    2. Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Georg Weizsäcker, 2008. "Stated Beliefs and Play in Normal-Form Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 729-762.
    3. Andrew Schotter & Isabel Trevino, 2014. "Belief Elicitation in the Laboratory," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 103-128, August.
    4. Srihari Govindan & Robert Wilson, 2009. "On Forward Induction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(1), pages 1-28, January.
    5. David Danz & Dietmar Fehr & Dorothea Kübler, 2012. "Information and beliefs in a repeated normal-form game," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 622-640, December.
    6. Ben-Porath, Elchanan & Dekel, Eddie, 1992. "Signaling future actions and the potential for sacrifice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 36-51.
    7. Kohlberg, Elon & Mertens, Jean-Francois, 1986. "On the Strategic Stability of Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1003-1037, September.
    8. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    9. Huck, Steffen & Muller, Wieland, 2005. "Burning money and (pseudo) first-mover advantages: an experimental study on forward induction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 109-127, April.
    10. Jordi Brandts & Antonio Cabrales & Gary Charness, 2007. "Forward induction and entry deterrence: an experiment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 183-209, October.
    11. Armantier, Olivier & Treich, Nicolas, 2013. "Eliciting beliefs: Proper scoring rules, incentives, stakes and hedging," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 17-40.
    12. Charness, Gary & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2003. "Promises & Partnership," Research Papers in Economics 2003:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    13. , & ,, 2012. "Forward induction reasoning revisited," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(1), January.
    14. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    15. Kyle Bagwell & Garey Ramey, 1996. "Capacity, Entry, and Forward Induction," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(4), pages 660-680, Winter.
    16. Rick, Scott & Weber, Roberto A., 2010. "Meaningful learning and transfer of learning in games played repeatedly without feedback," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 716-730, March.
    17. Cooper, Russell & Douglas V. DeJong & Robert Forsythe & Thomas W. Ross, 1993. "Forward Induction in the Battle-of-the-Sexes Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1303-1316, December.
    18. Gary Charness & Martin Dufwenberg, 2006. "Promises and Partnership," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1579-1601, November.
    19. Man, Priscilla T.Y., 2012. "Forward induction equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 265-276.
    20. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    21. Yaw Nyarko & Andrew Schotter, 2002. "An Experimental Study of Belief Learning Using Elicited Beliefs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 971-1005, May.
    22. Croson, Rachel T. A., 2000. "Thinking like a game theorist: factors affecting the frequency of equilibrium play," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 299-314, March.
    23. Ponssard, Jean-Pierre, 1991. "Forward induction and sunk costs give average cost pricing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 221-236, May.
    24. Erte Xiao & Daniel Houser, 2005. "Emotion expression in human punishment behavior," Experimental 0504003, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 May 2005.
    25. Kyle Hyndman & Erkut Y. Ozbay & Andrew Schotter & Wolf Ze’ev Ehrblatt, 2012. "Convergence: An Experimental Study Of Teaching And Learning In Repeated Games," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 573-604, May.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Burkhard C. Schipper & Hang Zhou, 2022. "Level-k Thinking in the Extensive Form," Working Papers 352, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    2. Masaki Aoyagi & Naoko Nishimura & Yoshitaka Okano, 2022. "Voluntary redistribution mechanism in asymmetric coordination games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 444-482, April.
    3. Michal Krol & Magdalena Ewa Krol, 2020. "On the strategic value of ‘shooting yourself in the foot’: an experimental study of burning money," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(1), pages 23-45, March.
    4. Chlaß, Nadine & Perea, Andrés, 2016. "How do people reason in dynamic games?," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145881, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Rasocha, Vlastimil, 2021. "Experimental methods: Eliciting beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 234-256.
    2. Folli, Dominik & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2022. "Biases in belief reports," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    3. Eyting, Markus & Schmidt, Patrick, 2021. "Belief elicitation with multiple point predictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    4. Polonio, Luca & Coricelli, Giorgio, 2019. "Testing the level of consistency between choices and beliefs in games using eye-tracking," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 566-586.
    5. Dufwenberg, Martin & Köhlin, Gunnar & Martinsson, Peter & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2016. "Thanks but no thanks: A new policy to reduce land conflict," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 31-50.
    6. David Danz & Dietmar Fehr & Dorothea Kübler, 2012. "Information and beliefs in a repeated normal-form game," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 622-640, December.
    7. Claudia Neri, 2015. "Eliciting beliefs in continuous-choice games: a double auction experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 569-608, December.
    8. Dominik Bauer & Irenaeus Wolff, 2018. "Biases in Beliefs: Experimental Evidence," TWI Research Paper Series 109, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    9. Bauer, Dominik & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2019. "Biases in Beliefs," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203601, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Swagata Bhattacharjee, 2019. "Delegation Using Forward Induction," Working Papers 17, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    11. Swagata Bhattacharjee, 2019. "Delegation Using Forward Induction," Working Papers 1026, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    12. Andreas Blume & Peter H. Kriss & Roberto A. Weber, 2017. "Pre-play communication with forgone costly messages: experimental evidence on forward induction," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(2), pages 368-395, June.
    13. Armantier, Olivier & Treich, Nicolas, 2013. "Eliciting beliefs: Proper scoring rules, incentives, stakes and hedging," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 17-40.
    14. Gary Charness & Francesco Feri & Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiménez & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "An Experimental Study on the Effects of Communication, Credibility, and Clustering in Network Games," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1530-1543, November.
    15. Manski, Charles F. & Neri, Claudia, 2013. "First- and second-order subjective expectations in strategic decision-making: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 232-254.
    16. Sofianos, Andis, 2022. "Self-reported & revealed trust: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    17. Kim, Jeongbin & Putterman, Louis & Zhang, Xinyi, 2022. "Trust, Beliefs and Cooperation: Excavating a Foundation of Strong Economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    18. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    19. Nagore Iriberri & Pedro Rey‐Biel, 2013. "Elicited beliefs and social information in modified dictator games: What do dictators believe other dictators do?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 4(3), pages 515-547, November.
    20. Sutter, Matthias & Czermak, Simon & Feri, Francesco, 2013. "Strategic sophistication of individuals and teams. Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 395-410.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:128:y:2016:i:c:p:195-208. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.