Abstract
We analyze a class of coordination games in which the Kth player to submit an entry wins a contest. These games have an infinite number of symmetric equilibria and the set of equilibria does not change with K. We run experiments with 15 participants and with K=3, 7, and 11. Our experiments show that the value of K affects initial submissions and convergence to equilibrium. When K is small relative to the number of participants, our experiments show that repeated play converges to or near zero. When K is large, an equilibrium is often not reached as a result of repeated play. We seek explanations to these patterns in hierarchical thinking and direction learning.
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Carare, O., Haruvy, E. & Prasad, A. Hierarchical thinking and learning in rank order contests. Exp Econ 10, 305–316 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-007-9180-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-007-9180-2