Conventions and Local Interaction Structures: Experimental Evidence

We present a set of experimental coordination games with a payoff-dominant and a risk-dominant Nash equilibrium. We examine how much local interaction structures affect players' strategy choices. Our three major observations are the following: First, local interaction with open neighborhoods along a circle leads to less coordination on the payoff-dominant equilibrium than interaction in closed neighborhoods (see also Keser, Ehrhart, and Berninghaus, Economics Letters, 1998). Second, when players are allocated around a circle, the neighborhood size has, in the long run, no effect on the players' strategy choices. Third, with the same neighborhood size, players allocated on a lattice tend less than players allocated around a circle to coordinate on the payoff-dominant equilibrium. This is true although the players are given exactly the same instructions.
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