IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kob/dpaper/dp2020-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Implementation in Iterative Elimination of Obviously Dominated Strategies: An Experiment on King Solomon's Dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Makoto Hagiwara

    (Faculty of Economics, Osaka University of Economics, Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University, JAPAN)

  • Fumihiro Yonekura

    (School of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)

Abstract

"King Solomon's Dilemma" is based on a biblical story and this can be considered as an allocation problem for an indivisible object among two players. A social planner wants to assign the object without payment to the player whose valuation is the highest. We say that such an allocation is "first-best." We experimentally compare the relative performance of the mechanism of Mihara (Japanese Economic Review, 63(3), 420-429, 2012) and a mechanism which we modify Mihara's mechanism. We find that a modified Mihara's mechanism relatively works better than Mihara's mechanism from the following five view points: (1) the proportion of the first-best allocations; (2) the proportion of the right-player allocations; (3) resource inefficiency and wrong-player infficiency; (4) net mean efficiency; and (5) players' behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Makoto Hagiwara & Fumihiro Yonekura, 2020. "Implementation in Iterative Elimination of Obviously Dominated Strategies: An Experiment on King Solomon's Dilemma," Discussion Paper Series DP2020-17, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    • Handle: RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2020-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2020-17.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Perry, Motty & Reny, Philip J., 1999. "A General Solution to King Solomon's Dilemma," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 279-285, January.
    2. Masuda, Takehito & Okano, Yoshitaka & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi, 2014. "The minimum approval mechanism implements the efficient public good allocation theoretically and experimentally," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 73-85.
    3. Shengwu Li, 2017. "Obviously Strategy-Proof Mechanisms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3257-3287, November.
    4. Terri Kneeland, 2015. "Identifying Higher‐Order Rationality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83(5), pages 2065-2079, September.
    5. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    6. 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.
    7. H. Reiju Mihara, 2012. "The Second-Price Auction Solves King Solomon'S Dilemma," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 420-429, September.
    8. Cheng-Zhong Qin & Chun-Lei Yang, 2009. "Make a guess: a robust mechanism for King Solomon’s dilemma," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(2), pages 259-268, May.
    9. Costa-Gomes, Miguel & Crawford, Vincent P & Broseta, Bruno, 2001. "Cognition and Behavior in Normal-Form Games: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1193-1235, September.
    10. Rapoport, Amnon & Amaldoss, Wilfred, 2000. "Mixed strategies and iterative elimination of strongly dominated strategies: an experimental investigation of states of knowledge," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 483-521, August.
    11. Katok, Elena & Sefton, Martin & Yavas, Abdullah, 2002. "Implementation by Iterative Dominance and Backward Induction: An Experimental Comparison," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 89-103, May.
    12. Kagel, John H & Harstad, Ronald M & Levin, Dan, 1987. "Information Impact and Allocation Rules in Auctions with Affiliated Private Values: A Laboratory Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1275-1304, November.
    13. Elbittar, Alexander & Di Giannatale, Sonia, 2017. "“Neither I nor you shall have him”: An experimental study of the King Solomon's Dilemma," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 55-69.
    14. Olszewski, Wojciech, 2003. "A simple and general solution to King Solomon's problem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 315-318, February.
    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. Elbittar, Alexander & Di Giannatale, Sonia, 2017. "“Neither I nor you shall have him”: An experimental study of the King Solomon's Dilemma," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 55-69.
    2. Saran, Rene, 2016. "Bounded depths of rationality and implementation with complete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 517-564.
    3. Wei James Chen & Meng-Jhang Fong & Po-Hsuan Lin, 2023. "Measuring Higher-Order Rationality with Belief Control," Papers 2309.07427, arXiv.org.
    4. Breitmoser, Yves, 2019. "Knowing me, imagining you: Projection and overbidding in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 423-447.
    5. Külpmann, Philipp & Khantadze, Davit, 2016. "Identifying the reasons for coordination failure in a laboratory experiment," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 567, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    6. de Clippel, Geoffroy & Saran, Rene & Serrano, Roberto, 2023. "Continuous level-k mechanism design," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 481-501.
    7. Gerber, Anke & Wichardt, Philipp C., 2010. "Iterated reasoning and welfare-enhancing instruments in the centipede game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(1-2), pages 123-136, May.
    8. Alexander Elbittar & Sonia B. Di Giannatale, 2010. "King Solomon's Dilemma: An Experimental Study on Implementation," Working Papers DTE 477, CIDE, División de Economía.
    9. Li, Ying Xue & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2020. "Strategic reasoning in persuasion games: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 329-367.
    10. Geoffroy de Clippel & Rene Saran & Roberto Serrano, 2014. "Mechanism Design with Bounded Depth of Reasoning and Small Modeling Mistakes," Working Papers 2014-7, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    11. Bayer, Ralph C. & Renou, Ludovic, 2016. "Logical omniscience at the laboratory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 41-49.
    12. Piotr Evdokimov & Umberto Garfagnini, 2022. "Higher-order learning," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(4), pages 1234-1266, September.
    13. Noga Alon & Kirill Rudov & Leeat Yariv, 2021. "Dominance Solvability in Random Games," Working Papers 2021-84, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    14. Ernst Fehr & Michael Powell & Tom Wilkening, 2014. "Handing Out Guns at a Knife Fight: Behavioral Limitations of Subgame-Perfect Implementation," CESifo Working Paper Series 4948, CESifo.
    15. Alaoui, Larbi & Janezic, Katharina A. & Penta, Antonio, 2020. "Reasoning about others' reasoning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    16. Tilman Börgers & Jiangtao Li, 2019. "Strategically Simple Mechanisms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 2003-2035, November.
    17. Fehr, Ernst & Powell, Michael & Wilkening, Tom, 2021. "Behavioral Constraints on the Design of Subgame-Perfect Implementation Mechanisms," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 111(4), pages 1055-1091.
    18. Doğan, Gönül, 2018. "Collusion in a buyer–seller network formation game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 445-457.
    19. Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Szech, Nora, 2023. "Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    20. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Implementation in iterative elimination of obviously dominated strategies; King Solomon's Dilemma; Mihara's mechanism; Ascending clock auctions; Laboratory experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:kob:dpaper:dp2020-17. 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: Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rikobjp.html .

    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.