Essays on evolutive equilibrium selection /
This dissertation uses the experimental method to advance our
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
1996.
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| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=743149181&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | This dissertation uses the experimental method to advance our understanding of the origin of mutually consistent behavior among anonymously interacting agents. In particular, it investigates how problems of equilibrium selection in coordination games may be solved in an evolutionary framework and tests the accuracy of evolutionary dynamics such as the replicator dynamics. An evolutionary analysis describes the dynamic process by which decision makers adjust actions over time in response to experience. The first essay reports the results of a coordination game experiment. The experiment was designed to distinguish between conventions based on labels and conventions based on population membership. The labels treatments investigate the abstraction assumptions that underlie the concept of a strategy, while the population treatments investigate the attraction of alternative mutually consistent ways to play under adaptive behavior. We observe conventions emerging in communities with one population and labels and with two populations and no labels, but the most effective treatment is two labeled populations. The second essay reports evidence on the origin of convention among agents confronting similar but not identical strategic situations repeatedly. The experiment preserves the action space of the game, while randomly perturbing the payoffs and action labels in an effort to blunt the salience of inductive selection principles. Hence, the similarity between stage games is reduced to certain strategic details, like payoff dominance, security, and risk dominance. Nevertheless, we do observe conventions emerging in the payoff perturbed evolutionary games. The conventions require members of a population to recognize strategic similarities between stage games. The third essay reports the results of an experiment designed to test whether play eventually converges to the set of strictly undominated strategies in a game in which a pure strategy is strictly dominated by a mixed strategy. The strict dominance solution concept requires elimination of any action that is never a subjective best response. However, a discrete time replicator dynamic fails to converge to the unique equilibrium and the dominated action does not become extinct. We observe persistent play of the dominated strategy in both evolutionary and repeated game treatments. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Economics". |
| Physical Description: | 2 volumes : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilms Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |