Experimental Tests of Nash Refinements

非合作博弈研究中一个尚未解决的主要问题是 对纳什均衡概念的适当改进。 一 “细化”是一种理论，其均衡结果是 Nash结果集的真子集 的序列 已经提出了连续更强的改进，许多 它们是由简单游戏的具体例子激发的， 较弱的细化允许平衡，这被认为是不允许的。 理智一点 在这篇文献中，关于什么行为是合理的讨论 通常是基于作者的主观意见， “理性”的人会玩这个游戏。 虽然游戏 理论有时被认为是一种规范性理论， 理性代理人应该行为，该理论被广泛应用于 产业组织等经济学领域进行分析 具体问题，所以积极（经验）的内容游戏 理论也是相关的。 此外，讨论 直觉和非直觉的均衡通常是在 这些例子都是受市场应用的启发。 这个项目的贡献来自于谨慎地使用 设计了实验室实验来测试相互竞争的改进。 在这些实验中，经济奖励被用来诱导 参与者的偏好， 给出不同的预测。 实验结果将 提供了急需的经验证据， 改进多次未能预测控制的结果， 实验室实验

A major unresolved issue in the study of noncooperative games is the appropriate refinement of the Nash equilibrium concept. A "refinement" is a theory with equilibrium outcomes that are a proper subset of the set of Nash outcomes. A sequence of successively stronger refinements has been proposed, many of which are motivated by specific examples of simple games in which the weaker refinement permitted equilibria which were thought not to be sensible. In this literature, discussions about what behavior is sensible are typically based on the author's subjective opinion about how "rational" individuals would play the game. Even though game theory is sometimes said to be a normative theory about how rational agents ought to behave, the theory is widely applied in industrial organization and other areas of economics to analyze specific issues, so the positive (empirical) content of game theory is also relevant. In addition the discussions of intuitive and unintuitive equilibria are often in the context of examples that are inspired by market applications. The contribution of this project comes from using carefully designed laboratory experiments to test competing refinements. In these experiments financial rewards are used to induce players' preferences in a manner such that competing theories give distinct predictions. The results of the experiments will provide badly needed empirical evidence on which of these refinements repeatedly fail to predict the results of controlled laboratory experiments.