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When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Giovanna Devetag  and
Andreas Ortmann
Giovanna Devetag*
Affiliation:
Department of Law and Management, University of Perugia, Via Pascoli, 20, 06123 Perugia, Italy
Andreas Ortmann*
Affiliation:
CERGE-EI, Charles University Prague and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Politickych veznu 7, 111 21 Prague, Czech Republic
*
e-mail: mgiovanna.devetag@libero.it
e-mail: andreas.ortmann@cerge-ei.cz
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Abstract

Coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria have attracted major attention over the past two decades. Two early path-breaking sets of experimental studies were widely interpreted as suggesting that coordination failure is a common phenomenon in the laboratory. We identify the major determinants that seem to affect the incidence, and/or emergence, of coordination failure in the lab and review critically the existing experimental studies on coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria since that early evidence emerged. We conclude that there are many ways to engineer coordination successes.

Keywords

Coordination gamesPareto-ranked equilibriaPayoff-asymmetric equilibriaStag-hunt gamesOptimization incentivesRobustnessCoordinationCoordination failure

JEL classification

C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior C72: Noncooperative Games
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 10 , Issue 3: Special issue of Experimental Economics in honor of Raymond C. Battalio: Coordination Games , September 2007 , pp. 331 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Economic Science Association

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