We examine the phenomenon of escalation from an economist's perspective, emphasizing explanations which do not rule out rational behavior on the part of firms or agents. We argue that escalation cannot be established as a separate phenomenon unless these possible alternative explanations are...

EWA Lite is a one-parameter theory of learning in normal-form games. It approximates the free parameters in an earlier model (EWA) with functions of experience. The theory is tested on seven different games and compared to other learning and equilibrium theories. Either EWA Lite or parameterized...

The capacity of markets to aggregate information has been conclusively demonstrated but the limitations of that capacity have still not been fully explored. In this paper, we demonstrate the existence of "information traps". These traps appear to be a sort of equilibrium in which information...

Most learning models assume players are adaptive (i.e., they respond only to their own previous experience and ignore others' payoff information) and that behavior is not sensitive to the way in which players are matched. Empirical evidence suggests otherwise. In this paper, we extend our...

Recent experiments have indicated that it is possible to systematically lead subjects to less refined equilibria in signaling games. In this paper, we seek to understand the process by which this occurs using Camerer and Ho's Experience Weighted Attraction (EWA) model of learning in games. We...