IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v339y2004i3p559-573.html

Towards understanding the guessing game: a dynamical systems’ perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Reimann, Stefan

Abstract

The so-called “Guessing Game” or α-Beauty Contest serves as a paradigmatic conceptual framework for competitive price formation on financial markets beyond traditional equilibrium finance. It highlights features that are reasonable to consider when dealing with price formation on real markets. Nonetheless this game is still poorly understood. We propose a model which is essentially based on two assumptions: (1) players consider intervals rather than exact numbers to cope with incomplete knowledge and (2) players iteratively update their recent guesses. It provides an explanation for typical patterns observed in real data, such as the strict positivity of outcomes in the 1-shot setting, the skew background distribution of guessed numbers, as well as the polynomial convergence towards the game-theoretic Nash equilibrium in the iterative setting.

Suggested Citation

  • Reimann, Stefan, 2004. "Towards understanding the guessing game: a dynamical systems’ perspective," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 339(3), pages 559-573.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:339:y:2004:i:3:p:559-573
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.03.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037843710400295X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2004.03.012?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mas-Colell,Andreu, 1990. "The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521388702, January.
    2. Duffy, John & Nagel, Rosemarie, 1997. "On the Robustness of Behaviour in Experimental "Beauty Contest" Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1684-1700, November.
    3. Colin Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin Kuan Chong, 2003. "A cognitive hierarchy theory of one-shot games: Some preliminary results," Levine's Bibliography 506439000000000495, UCLA Department of Economics.
    4. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & José G. Montalvo & Rosemarie Nagel & Albert Satorra, 2002. "One, Two, (Three), Infinity, ...: Newspaper and Lab Beauty-Contest Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1687-1701, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Martin G. Kocher & Matthias Sutter, 2005. "The Decision Maker Matters: Individual Versus Group Behaviour in Experimental Beauty-Contest Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(500), pages 200-223, January.
    2. Robert Slonim, 2005. "Competing Against Experienced and Inexperienced Players," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 8(1), pages 55-75, April.
    3. Alessandro Lanteri & Anna Carabelli, 2011. "Beauty contested: how much of Keynes' remains in behavioural economics' beauty contests?," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 269-285.
    4. Tomasz Kopczewski, 2011. "Auto-selection in an Online Experiment, p-Beauty Contest Game," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 26.
    5. Guth, Werner & Kocher, Martin & Sutter, Matthias, 2002. "Experimental 'beauty contests' with homogeneous and heterogeneous players and with interior and boundary equilibria," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 219-228, January.
    6. C. Mónica Capra, 2019. "Understanding decision processes in guessing games: a protocol analysis approach," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 5(1), pages 123-135, August.
    7. Burnham, Terence C. & Cesarini, David & Wallace, Björn & Johannesson, Magnus & Lichtenstein, Paul, 2007. "Billiards and Brains: Cognitive Ability and Behavior in a p-Beauty Contest," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 684, Stockholm School of Economics.
    8. David L. Dickinson & Todd McElroy, 2009. "Naturally-occurring sleep choice and time of day effects on p-beauty contest outcomes," Working Papers 09-03, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    9. Grosskopf, Brit & Nagel, Rosemarie, 2008. "The two-person beauty contest," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 93-99, January.
    10. Andrea Morone & Serena Sandri & Tobias Uske, 2006. "On the absorbability of the Guessing Game Theory - A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2006-33, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    11. George W. Evans & Christopher G. Gibbs & Bruce McGough, 2025. "A Unified Model of Learning to Forecast," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 101-133, April.
    12. Philippe Gillen & Alexander Rasch & Achim Wambach & Peter Werner, 2016. "Bid pooling in reverse multi-unit Dutch auctions: an experimental investigation," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 81(4), pages 511-534, November.
    13. Lawrence C.Y Choo & Todd R. Kaplan, 2014. "Explaining Behavior in the "11-20” Game," Discussion Papers 1401, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    14. Sutter, Matthias, 2005. "Are four heads better than two? An experimental beauty-contest game with teams of different size," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 41-46, July.
    15. David Dickinson & Todd McElroy, 2012. "Circadian effects on strategic reasoning," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(3), pages 444-459, September.
    16. Wanqun Zhao, 2020. "Cost of Reasoning and Strategic Sophistication," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-27, September.
    17. Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2010. "Positive expectations feedback experiments and number guessing games as models of financial markets," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 964-984, December.
    18. Cardella, Eric, 2012. "Learning to make better strategic decisions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 382-392.
    19. Kocher, Martin & Strau[ss], Sabine & Sutter, Matthias, 2006. "Individual or team decision-making--Causes and consequences of self-selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 259-270, August.
    20. Mazzocco, Ketti & Cherubini, Anna Maria & Cherubini, Paolo, 2013. "On the short horizon of spontaneous iterative reasoning in logical puzzles and games," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 24-40.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:phsmap:v:339:y:2004:i:3:p:559-573. 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.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    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.