IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/theord/v87y2019i1d10.1007_s11238-019-09692-w.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination problems?

Author

Listed:
  • Swee-Hoon Chuah

    (RMIT University)

  • Robert Hoffmann

    (RMIT University)

  • Jeremy Larner

    (Nottingham University Business School)

Abstract

Does greater knowledge help or hinder one’s ability to coordinate with others? While individual expertise can reveal a suitable focal point to converge on, ‘blissful’ ignorance may systematically bias decisions towards it through mere recognition. Our experiment finds in favour of the former possibility. Both specific and general knowledge are significantly associated with success in four of five coordination problems as well as over all. Our analysis suggests that more knowledgeable participants are better able to identify focal decision alternatives because (1) they are aware of more such alternatives and (2) possess more relevant information about each.

Suggested Citation

  • Swee-Hoon Chuah & Robert Hoffmann & Jeremy Larner, 2019. "Is knowledge curse or blessing in pure coordination problems?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(1), pages 123-146, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:theord:v:87:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11238-019-09692-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s11238-019-09692-w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11238-019-09692-w
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11238-019-09692-w?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. John C. Harsanyi & Reinhard Selten, 1988. "A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262582384, December.
    2. Van Huyck, John B & Battalio, Raymond C & Beil, Richard O, 1990. "Tacit Coordination Games, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 234-248, March.
    3. Robert Sugden, 2005. "Spontaneous Order," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare, chapter 1, pages 1-9, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Martin Dufwenberg & Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Gender & Coordination," Springer Books, in: Rami Zwick & Amnon Rapoport (ed.), Experimental Business Research, chapter 0, pages 253-262, Springer.
    5. Sugden, Robert, 1995. "A Theory of Focal Points," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(430), pages 533-550, May.
    6. Arthur, W Brian, 1989. "Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Events," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(394), pages 116-131, March.
    7. Bruno Biais & Martin Weber, 2009. "Hindsight Bias, Risk Perception, and Investment Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(6), pages 1018-1029, June.
    8. Ariel Rubinstein, 2000. "Economics and Language," Online economics textbooks, SUNY-Oswego, Department of Economics, number lang1.
    9. Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap & David Rojo Arjona & Robert Sugden, 2017. "Coordination when there are restricted and unrestricted options," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 83(1), pages 107-129, June.
    10. Kandori, Michihiro & Mailath, George J & Rob, Rafael, 1993. "Learning, Mutation, and Long Run Equilibria in Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(1), pages 29-56, January.
    11. Camerer, Colin & Loewenstein, George & Weber, Martin, 1989. "The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings: An Experimental Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1232-1254, October.
    12. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521593069 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Dan Ariely & George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 2003. ""Coherent Arbitrariness": Stable Demand Curves Without Stable Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 73-106.
    14. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521789905 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Reinhard Selten, 1998. "Axiomatic Characterization of the Quadratic Scoring Rule," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 43-61, June.
    16. Abele, Susanne & Stasser, Garold & Chartier, Christopher, 2014. "Use of social knowledge in tacit coordination: Social focal points," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 23-33.
    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. Gächter, Simon & Starmer, Chris & Thöni, Christian & Tufano, Fabio & Weber, Till O., 2022. "Social closeness can help, harm and be irrelevant in solving pure coordination problems," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).

    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. Swee Hoon Chuah & Robert Hoffmann & Lee Chew Ging, 2004. "Coordination and Incomplete Information: an Experimental Study," Occasional Papers 7, Industrial Economics Division.
    2. Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2016. "Disentangling Social Capital: Lab-in-the-Field Evidence on Coordination, Networks, and Cooperation," Artefactual Field Experiments 00565, The Field Experiments Website.
    3. Giovanna Devetag, 2000. "Transfer, Focality and Coordination: Some Experimental Results," LEM Papers Series 2000/02, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    4. Alessandro Sontuoso & Sudeep Bhatia, 2021. "A notion of prominence for games with natural‐language labels," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), pages 283-312, January.
    5. Kets, Willemien & Kager, Wouter & Sandroni, Alvaro, 2022. "The value of a coordination game," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    6. Cabrales, Antonio & Garcia-Fontes, Walter & Motta, Massimo, 2000. "Risk dominance selects the leader: An experimental analysis," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 137-162, January.
    7. Dirk Helbing & Anders Johansson, 2010. "Cooperation, Norms, and Revolutions: A Unified Game-Theoretical Approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(10), pages 1-15, October.
    8. Alexander Funcke & Daniel Cownden, 2015. "A Mechanism for Optimal Enforcement of Coordination: Sidestepping Theory of Mind," PPE Working Papers 0003, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    9. Heller, Yuval & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2024. "Communication, renegotiation and coordination with private values," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 51-76.
    10. Heath, Chip & Ho, Ben & Berger, Jonah, 2006. "Focal points in coordinated divergence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 635-647, October.
    11. Heller, Yuval & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2020. "Communication, Renegotiation and Coordination with Private Values (Extended Version)," MPRA Paper 102926, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Jul 2021.
    12. Maarten C.W. Janssen, 1997. "Focal Points," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 97-091/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Ennis, Huberto M. & Keister, Todd, 2005. "Government policy and the probability of coordination failures," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 939-973, May.
    14. Jun Honda, 2015. "Games with the Total Bandwagon Property," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp197, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    15. Giovanna Devetag & Andreas Ortmann, 2007. "When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(3), pages 331-344, September.
    16. Péter Bayer & Ani Guerdjikova, 2020. "Optimism leads to optimality: Ambiguity in network formation," Working Papers hal-03005107, HAL.
    17. Sven Fischer & Werner Güth & Wieland Müller & Andreas Stiehler, 2006. "From ultimatum to Nash bargaining: Theory and experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(1), pages 17-33, April.
    18. Boyu Zhang & Josef Hofbauer, 2015. "Equilibrium selection via replicator dynamics in $$2 \times 2$$ 2 × 2 coordination games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(2), pages 433-448, May.
    19. Sanjeev Goyal & Penélope Hernández & Guillem Martínez-Cánovas & Frédéric Moisan & Manuel Muñoz-Herrera & Angel Sánchez, 2021. "Integration and diversity," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 387-413, June.
      • Goyal, S. & Hernández, P. & Muñnez-Cánovasz, G. & Moisan, F. & Muñoz-Herrera, M. & Sánchez, A., 2017. "Integration and Diversity," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1721, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
      • Sanjeev Goyal & Penélope Hernández & Guillem Martínez-Cánovas & Frederic Moisan & Manuel Muñoz-Herrera & Angel Sánchez, 2021. "Integration and Diversity," Post-Print hal-03188210, HAL.
      • Sanjeev Goyal & Penelope Hernandez & Guillem Martinez-Canovas & Frederic Moisan & Manuel Munoz-Herrera & Angel Sanchez, 2019. "Integration and Diversity," Working Papers 20190025, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Sep 2020.
      • Sanjeev Goyal & Pénélope Hernández & Guillem Martínez-Cánovas & Frédéric Moisan & Manuel Muñoz-Herrera & Ángel Sánchez, 2021. "Integration and diversity," Post-Print halshs-03051962, HAL.
    20. Christoph Kuzmics & Daniel Rodenburger, 2020. "A case of evolutionarily stable attainable equilibrium in the laboratory," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(3), pages 685-721, October.

    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:kap:theord:v:87:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11238-019-09692-w. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.