What Happens in the Field Stays in the Field: Exploring Whether Professionals Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments
What Happens in the Field Stays in the Field: Exploring Whether Professionals Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments
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现场发生的事情就留在现场：探索专业人士是否在实验室实验中玩极小极大游戏
DOI：
10.3982/ecta7405
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
6.1
通讯作者：
David H. Reiley
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Steven D. Levitt;John A. List;David H. Reiley
极大极小论证以其最优雅的形式代表了博弈论：简单但有严格的预测。虽然这些预测中的一些已经在该领域取得了合理的成功，但实验数据通常没有提供接近理论预测的结果。在一项引人注目的研究中，Palacios-Huerta和Volij（2007）提出了可能解决这个难题的证据：业余和职业足球运动员在实验室实验中几乎都使用精确的极大极小策略。在本文中，我们建立了重要的界限，这些结果通过检查四个不同的主题池的行为：大学生，桥牌专业人士，世界级的扑克玩家，谁拥有丰富的经验，高风险的随机纸牌游戏，和美国职业足球运动员。与Palacios-Huerta和Volij的结果相反，我们发现几乎没有证据表明现实世界的经验在这些游戏中转移到实验室-事实上，与以前的实验结果类似，所有四个受试者池提供的选择通常不接近极大极小预测。我们使用两个额外的证据来探索为什么专业人士在实验室中表现不佳：（1）补充实验治疗，让专业人士与预先编程的计算机进行对抗，（2）实验后问卷调查。最可能的解释是，这些专业人员无法将他们的技能从熟悉的领域随机转移到不熟悉的实验室环境中。
The minimax argument represents game theory in its most elegant form: simple but with stark predictions. Although some of these predictions have been met with reasonable success in the field, experimental data have generally not provided results close to the theoretical predictions. In a striking study, Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2007) present evidence that potentially resolves this puzzle: both amateur and professional soccer players play nearly exact minimax strategies in laboratory experiments. In this paper, we establish important bounds on these results by examining the behavior of four distinct subject pools: college students, bridge professionals, world-class poker players, who have vast experience with high-stakes randomization in card games, and American professional soccer players. In contrast to Palacios-Huerta and Volij's results, we find little evidence that real-world experience transfers to the lab in these games--indeed, similar to previous experimental results, all four subject pools provide choices that are generally not close to minimax predictions. We use two additional pieces of evidence to explore why professionals do not perform well in the lab: (1) complementary experimental treatments that pit professionals against preprogrammed computers, and (2) post-experiment questionnaires. The most likely explanation is that these professionals are unable to transfer their skills at randomization from the familiar context of the field to the unfamiliar context of the lab.