IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/732.html

Correlated equilibrium and behavioural conformity

Author

Listed:
  • Cartwright, Edward

    (Department of Economics, University of Kent)

  • Wooders, Myrna

    (Department of Economics, University of Warwick)

Abstract

Is conformity amongst similar individuals consistent with self-interested behavior? We consider a model of incomplete information in which each player receives a signal, interpreted as an allocation to a role, and can make his action choice conditional on his role. Our main result demonstrates that ‘near to’ any correlated equilibrium is an approximate correlated equilibrium ‘with conformity’ — that is, an equilibrium where all ‘similar players’ play the same strategy, have the same probability of being allocated to each role, and receive approximately the same payoff; in short, similar players ‘behave in an identical way’ and are treated nearly equally. To measure ‘similarity’ amongst players we introduce the notions of approximate substitutes and a (d, Q)-class games — a game with Q classes of players where all players in the same class are d-substitutes for each other.

Suggested Citation

  • Cartwright, Edward & Wooders, Myrna, 2005. "Correlated equilibrium and behavioural conformity," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 732, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2008/twerp_732.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Aumann, 2025. "Subjectivity and Correlation in Randomized Strategies," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: SELECTED CONTRIBUTIONS TO GAME THEORY, chapter 4, pages 73-113, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Rapoport, Amnon & Seale, Darryl A. & Winter, Eyal, 2002. "Coordination and Learning Behavior in Large Groups with Asymmetric Players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 111-136, April.
    3. Wooders, Myrna & Cartwright, Edward & Selten, Reinhard, "undated". "Social Conformity and Equilibrium in Pure Strategies in Games with Many Players," Economic Research Papers 269410, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    4. Sergiu Hart, 2013. "Adaptive Heuristics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 11, pages 253-287, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Cartwright, Edward, "undated". "Learning to play approximate Nash equilibria in games with many players," Economic Research Papers 269484, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    6. Kovalenkov, Alexander & Wooders, Myrna, 2003. "Approximate cores of games and economies with clubs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 87-120, May.
    7. Robert J. Aumann, 2025. "Correlated Equilibrium as an Expression of Bayesian Rationality," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: SELECTED CONTRIBUTIONS TO GAME THEORY, chapter 7, pages 175-200, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Shaun Hargreaves-Heap & Yanis Varoufakis, 2002. "Some Experimental Evidence On The Evolution Of Discrimination, Co--Operation And Perceptions Of Fairness," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 679-703, July.
    9. Friedman, Daniel, 1996. "Equilibrium in Evolutionary Games: Some Experimental Results," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(434), pages 1-25, January.
    10. Sugden, Robert, 1995. "A Theory of Focal Points," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(430), pages 533-550, May.
    11. Van Huyck, John B & Battalio, Raymond C & Rankin, Frederick W, 1997. "On the Origin of Convention: Evidence from Coordination Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(442), pages 576-596, May.
    12. Adam Brandenburger & Eddie Dekel, 2014. "Rationalizability and Correlated Equilibria," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Language of Game Theory Putting Epistemics into the Mathematics of Games, chapter 3, pages 43-57, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    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. Edward Cartwright & Myrna Wooders, 2008. "Behavioral Properties of Correlated Equilibrium; Social Group Structures with Conformity and Stereotyping," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0814, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    2. Azrieli, Yaron, 2009. "Categorizing others in a large game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 351-362, November.

    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. Edward Cartwright & Myrna Wooders, 2008. "Behavioral Properties of Correlated Equilibrium; Social Group Structures with Conformity and Stereotyping," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0814, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    2. Fabrizio Germano & Peio Zuazo-Garin, 2012. "Approximate Knowledge of Rationality and Correlated Equilibria," Discussion Paper Series dp610, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    3. Fabrizio Germano & Peio Zuazo-Garin, 2017. "Bounded rationality and correlated equilibria," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(3), pages 595-629, August.
    4. repec:ehu:ikerla:8757 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/171 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Amanda Friedenberg, 2006. "Can Hidden Variables Explain Correlation? (joint with Adam Brandenburger)," Theory workshop papers 815595000000000005, UCLA Department of Economics.
    7. Hillas, John & Samet, Dov, 2022. "Non-Bayesian correlated equilibrium as an expression of non-Bayesian rationality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 1-15.
    8. Edward Cartwright & Myrna Wooders, 2014. "Correlated Equilibrium, Conformity, and Stereotyping in Social Groups," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(5), pages 743-766, October.
    9. Tang, Qianfeng, 2015. "Interim partially correlated rationalizability," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 36-44.
    10. Edward Cartwright & Myrna Wooders, 2008. "Conformity, Equity and Correlated Equilibrium," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0806, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    11. Cartwright, Edward & Wooders, Myrna, 2003. "Social Conformity And Bounded Rationality In Arbitrary Games With Incomplete Information : Some First Results," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 672, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    12. Moulin, Herve & Ray, Indrajit & Sen Gupta, Sonali, 2014. "Improving Nash by coarse correlation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 852-865.
    13. Xiao Luo & Ben Wang, 2022. "An epistemic characterization of MACA," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 73(4), pages 995-1024, June.
    14. Friedman, Daniel & Rabanal, Jean Paul & Rud, Olga A. & Zhao, Shuchen, 2022. "On the empirical relevance of correlated equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    15. Rankin, Frederick W. & Van Huyck, John B. & Battalio, Raymond C., 2000. "Strategic Similarity and Emergent Conventions: Evidence from Similar Stag Hunt Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 315-337, August.
    16. Bach, Christian W. & Perea, Andrés, 2020. "Two definitions of correlated equilibrium," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 12-24.
    17. Subhasish Dugar & Quazi Shahriar, 2012. "Focal Points and Economic Efficiency: The Role of Relative Label Salience," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 78(3), pages 954-975, January.
    18. Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Bonanno, Giacomo, 1999. "Recent results on belief, knowledge and the epistemic foundations of game theory," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 149-225, June.
    19. John Hillas & Elon Kohlberg, 1996. "Foundations of Strategic Equilibrium," Game Theory and Information 9606002, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Sep 1996.
    20. Halpern, Joseph Y. & Pass, Rafael, 2013. "Conservative belief and rationality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 186-192.
    21. Verena Kurz & Andreas Orland & Kinga Posadzy, 2018. "Fairness versus efficiency: how procedural fairness concerns affect coordination," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(3), pages 601-626, September.
    22. Arnaud Wolff, 2019. "On the Function of Beliefs in Strategic Social Interactions," Working Papers of BETA 2019-41, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:wrk:warwec:732. 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: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.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.