We investigate the effect of absence of common knowledge on the outcomes of coordination games in a laboratory experiment. Using cognitive types, we can explain coordination failure in pure coordination games while differentiating between coordination failure due to first- and higher-order...

Bertrand competition under decreasing returns involves a wide interval of pure strategy equilibrium prices. We first present results of experiments in which two, three and four identical firms repeatedly interact in this environment. Less collusion with more firms leads to lower average prices....

A product set of pure strategies is a prep set ("prep" is short for "preparation") if it contains at least one best reply to any consistent belief that a player may have about the strategic behavior of his opponents. Minimal prep sets are shown to exists in a class of strategic games satisfying...

We study a communication game of common interest in which the sender observes one of infinite types and sends one of finite messages which is interpreted by the receiver. In equilibrium there is no full separation but types are clustered into convex categories. We give a full characterization of...

We report experiments designed to test between Nash equilibria that are stable and unstable under learning. The “TASP” (Time Average of the Shapley Polygon) gives a precise prediction about what happens when there is divergence from equilibrium under fictitious play like learning processes....

This paper provides a definition of epistemic stability of sets of strategy profiles, and uses it to characterize variants of curb sets in finite games, including the set of rationalizable strategies and minimal curb sets. -- Epistemic game theory ; epistemic stability ; rationalizability ;...

We present a simple model of elections in which experts with special interests endorse candidates and endorsements are observed by the voters. We show that the equilibrium election outcome is biased towards the experts' interests even though voters know the distribution of expert interests and...

Absentmindedness is a special case of imperfect recall which according to Piccione and Rubinstein (1997a) leads to time inconsistencies. Aumann, Hart and Perry (1997a) question their argument and show how dynamic inconsistencies can be resolved. The present paper explores this issue from a...