Whom are you talking with? An experiment on group play and communication

Marco Mantovani (Université Saint-Louis) will talk about "Whom are you talking with? An experiment on group play and communication" -- see abstract below
Where: BELSS -- our experimental lab on the 3rd floor of the Roentgen building
When: Wednesday April 2 at 17.30-18.20+
Afterwards: we go for a post-seminar aperitivo

Abstract:
In two-by-two coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria preplay communication leads to higher levels of coordination on the Pareto-dominant equilibrium. The paper shows, theoretically and experimentally, that with more players this result critically depends on the structure of communication employed – i.e. who is talking with whom. We propose a notion of credibility of messages that is sensitive to the communication structure. In the experiment we vary the communication structure in a three-player game – the coalitional prisoner’s dilemma. On aggregate the communication structure have a huge impact on play, and the experimental data conform to our predictions: the agents reach the Pareto-dominant equilibrium only when announcing to play it is credible. More articulate communication structures make these messages non-credible, and the players converge to the Pareto-dominated equilibrium. At the individual level, the players’ beliefs tend to react to messages even when they are non-credible.

We hope many will attend. If you have questions, contact Martin Dufwenberg (martin.dufwenberg@unibocconi.it), Joshua Miller (joshua.miller@unibocconi.it) or Fabrizio Iozzi (fabrizio.iozzi@unibocconi.it).