Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-15-2018
Abstract
This study reports a continuous-time experimental test of evolutionary models in coordinated attacker–defender games. It implements three experimental treatment conditions: one with strong coordination incentives, one with weak coordination incentives, and one with zero coordination incentives. Each treatment exhibits identical equilibrium predictions but distinct evolutionary predictions. Observed behavior was tightly clustered around equilibrium under both the zero coordination treatment and the weak coordination treatment but widely dispersed from equilibrium under the strong coordination treatment. This result was anticipated by explicitly dynamic models but not by conventional stability criteria. In contrast to the widely maintained assumption of sign-preservation, subjects frequently switched to lower earning strategies, suggesting that non-sign-preserving evolutionary models may provide a more accurate characterization of human behavior.
Recommended Citation
Stephenson, D. G. (2018). Coordination and evolutionary dynamics: When are evolutionary models reliable? Games and Economic Behavior. doi: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.10.002
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
This article was originally published in Games and Economic Behavior in 2018. DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.10.002