A long-standing open question raised in the seminal paper of Kalai and Lehrer (1993) is whether or not the play of a repeated game, in the rational learning model introduced there, must eventually resemble play of exact equilibria, and not just play of approximate equilibria as demonstrated...

We examine some of the factors that might influence the quality of information produced in discussion groups on the internet, such as USENET and the WELL. In particular, we look at the impact of various different pricing structures, and compare regimes in which anonymity is enforced with regimes...

We exploit a unique opportunity to study how a large population of players in the field learn to play a novel game with a complicated and non-intuitive mixed strategy equilibrium.  We argue that standard models of belief-based learning and reinforcement learning are unable to explain the data,...

The diffusion of an innovation can be represented by a process in which agents choose perturbed best responses to what their neighbors are currently doing.  Diffusion is said to be fast if the expected waiting time until the innovation spreads widely is bounded above independently of the size...

This paper studies the extent to which diffusion approximations provide a reliable guide to equilibrium selection results in finite games. It is shown that they do for a class of finite games with weak learning provided that limits are taken in a certain order. The paper also shows that making...

This paper demonstrates that inertia driven by switching costs leads to more rapid evolution in a class of games that includes m x m pure coordination games. Under the best-response dynamic and a fixed rate of mutation, the expected waiting time to reach long-run equilibrium is of lower order in...

Collective action problems arise in a variety of situations. The economic theory of public good provision raises a number of important questions. Who contributes to the public good, and who free rides? How might a social planner exploit the interdependence of decision-making to encourage...

The volunteer`s dilemma is an asymmetric n-player binary-action game in which a public good is provided if and only if at least one player volunteers, and consequently bears some private cost. So long as the value generated for every player exceeds this private cost there are n pure-strategy...

"Group selection" is often cited as an explanation for the survival of altruism. The idea of group selection is a controversial one - much effort has been expended on its justification (and refutation). Relatively little effort has gone into formally testing whether or not it can actually...

This paper uses the theory of large deviations to analyse equilibrium selection in one-dimensional games with large populations where the system evolves according to a jump Markov process. The equilibria selected maximise a quasi-potential function which can be determined by solving a polynomial...