We develop a new design for the experimental beauty-contest game (BCG) that is suitable for children in school age and test it with 114 schoolchildren aged 9–11 years as well as with adults. In addition, we collect a measure for cognitive skills to link these abilities with successful performance in the game. Results demonstrate that children can successfully understand and play a BCG. Choices start at a slightly higher level than those of adults but learning over time and depth of reasoning are largely comparable with the results of studies run with adults. Cognitive skills, measured as fluid IQ, are predictive only of whether children choose weakly dominated strategies but are neither associated with lower choices in the first round nor with successful performance in the BCG. In the implementation of our new design of the BCG with adults we find results largely in line with behavior in the classical BCG. Our new design for the experimental BCG allows to study the development of strategic interaction skills starting already in school age.

In order to portray the true extent of judicial independence in China’s judicial practices, this article first clarifies the contested meanings of “judicial independence” within Chinese judicial circles and provides a detailed literature review of the main school of thoughts on the extent of judicial independence in China. In contrast to the existing literature—most of which sees judicial independence in China as stagnant—this thesis suggests employing the strategic interaction approach to study the development of impartial adjudication in China and argues that the extent of adjudicative independence is evolving with the amount of judicial discretion afforded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to judges.

Consumer product manufacturers often compete in dynamic, multi-firm oligopolies using multiple strategic tools. While existing empirical models of strategic interaction typically consider only parts of the more general problem, this paper presents a more comprehensive alternative. Marketing decisions are dynamically optimal, consistent with optimal consumer choice, and responsive to rival decisions. Using a single-market case study that consists of five years of four-weekly data on ready-to-eat cereal sales, prices, and new brand introductions, we test several hypotheses regarding the nature of strategic interaction among several rival manufacturers. We find that cereal manufacturers price and introduce new brands cooperatively in the same period, but behave more competitively when dynamic reactions are included.

This paper shows that limited asset-market participation (LAMP) generates an extra inflation bias when the fiscal and the monetary authority play strategically. A fully redistributive fiscal policy eliminates the extra inflation bias, but at the cost of reducing Ricardians' welfare. A fiscal authority that redistributes income only partially reduces the inflation bias, but raises government spending. Although a fully conservative monetary policy is necessary to get price stability, it implies a reduction in liquidity-constrained consumers' welfare, in the absence of redistributive fiscal policies. Finally, under a crisis scenario, none of the policy regimes is able to avoid the fall in economic activity when the increase in the fraction of LAMP is coupled with a negative technology shock, whereas optimal policy can avoid recession when it responds to the increase in LAMP proportion alone.

In this article, we approach world politics through the lens of its manifold practices, which we define as competent performances. Studying International Relations (IR) from the perspective of international practices promises three key advances. First, by focusing on practices in IR, we can understand both IR theory and international politics better or differently. World politics can be conceived as structured by practices, which give meaning to international action, make possible strategic interaction, and are reproduced, changed, and reinforced by international action and interaction. This focus helps broaden the ontology of world politics, serves as a focal point around which debates in IR theory can be structured, and can be used as a unit of analysis that transcends traditional understandings of ‘levels of analysis’. We illustrate what an international practice is by revisiting Thomas Schelling's seminal works on bargaining. Second, with the help of illustrations of deterrence and arms control during the Cold War and of post-Cold War practices such as cooperative security, we show how practices constitute strategic interaction and bargaining more generally. Finally, a practice perspective opens an exciting and innovative research agenda, which suggests new research questions and puzzles, and revisits central concepts of our discipline, including power, history, and strategy.