Sophisticated play by idiosyncratic agents

David P. Myatt, Chris Wallace*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Agents are drawn from a large population and matched to play a symmetric 2 times; 2 coordination game, the payoffs of which are perturbed by agent-specific heterogeneity. Individuals observe a (possibly sampled) history of play, which forms the initial hypothesis for an opponent's behaviour. Using this hypothesis as a starting point, the agents iteratively reason toward a Bayesian Nash equilibrium. When sampling is complete and the noise becomes vanishingly small, a single equilibrium is played almost all the time. A necessary and sufficient condition for selection, shown to be closely related (but not identical) to risk-dominance, is derived. When sampling is sufficiently incomplete, the risk-dominant equilibrium is played irrespective of the history observed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)319-345
Number of pages27
JournalJournal of Evolutionary Economics
Volume13
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2003

Keywords

  • Anticipation
  • Idiosyncrasy
  • Risk-dominance
  • Sampling
  • Sophisticated play

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