We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule "imitate-the-best" can hardly be beaten by any other decision rule. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable and show that it can only be beaten by much in games that are of...

It is well known that the rock-paper-scissors game has no pure saddle point. We show that this holds more generally: A symmetric two-player zero-sum game has a pure saddle point if and only if it is not a generalized rock-paper-scissors game. Moreover, we show that every finite symmetric...

The power to coerce workers is important for the efficient operation of hierarchically structured organizations. However, this power can also be used by managers to exploit their subordinates for their own benefit. We examine the relationship between the power to coerce and exploitation in a...

We show that in symmetric two-player exact potential games, the simple decision rule "imitate-if-better" cannot be beaten by any strategy in a repeated game by more than the maximal payoff difference of the one-period game. Our results apply to many interesting games including examples like 2x2...

As illustrated by the famous Ellsberg paradox, many subjects prefer to bet on events with known rather than with unknown probabilities, i.e., they are ambiguity averse. In an experiment, we examine subjects’ choices when there is an additional source of ambiguity, namely, when they do not know...

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....

In premium auctions, the highest losing bidder receives a reward from the seller. This paper studies the private value English premium auction (EPA) for different risk attitudes of bidders. We explicitly derive the symmetric equilibrium for bidders with CARA utilities and conduct an experimental...