We show in this paper that none of the existing static evolutionary stability concepts (ESS, CSS, uninvadability, NIS) is sufficient to guarantee dynamic stability in the weak topology with respect to standard evolutionary dynamics if the strategy space is continuous. We propose a new concept,...

This paper addresses the relation between the degree of decentralization in a population and the probability of coordinating on an efficient outcome. An evolutionary learning mechanism with a group structure that allows players to "vote with their feet" is introduced. In contrast to most of the...

The endowment effect describes the fact that people demand much more to give up an object than they are willing to spend to acquire it. The existence of this effect has been documented in numerous experiments. We attempt to explain this effect by showing that evolution favors individuals whose...

Recently, the theory of informational cascades has been tested in an experiment by Anderson and Holt (1997) who report that their data support the theory amazingly well. In this note we report on an experiment designed to find out whether observed cascades are indeed due to rational Bayesian...

We report results of a series of experiments designed to test the stability of the best reply process. With linear demand and cost functions, the process is stable if and only if there are less than three firms in the market. However, we find no experimental evidence of such instability in a...

We provide a new explanation for the apparent underpricing of initial public offerings applicable to large, regulated firms like telecommunications companies. Under the assumption that regulation is subject to political pressure by voters we demonstrate that it may be rational for issuers to...

This paper investigates the impact of information about rivals' actions on the competitiveness of experimental oligopoly markets. We compare two treatments: in one, firms are informed about their rivals' actions and profits. In the other, firms are only given some aggregate information about...

One of the more convincing interpretations of mixed strategy equilibria describes a mixed equilibrium as a steady state in a large population in which all players use pure strategies but the population as a whole mimics a mixed strategy. To be complete, however, this interpretation requires a...

The study of evolutionary dynamics was so far mainly restricted to finite strategy spaces. In this paper we show that this restriction is in most cases unnecessary. We give a mild condition under which the continuous time replicator dynamics are well defined for infinite strategy spaces....

Experimental results on the ultimatum game show clearly that (1) large fractions of players offer a 'fair' allocation and (2) that unfair (but positive) offers are systematically rejected. We offer an explanation of this behavior using the 'indirect evolutionary approach' which is based on the...