The Power of Focal Points Is Limited: Even Minute Payoff Asymmetry May Yield Large Coordination Failures

Since Schelling, it has often been assumed that players make use of salient decision labels to achieve coordination. Consistent with previous work, we find that given equal payoffs, salient labels yield frequent coordination. However, given even minutely asymmetric payoffs, labels lose much of their...

Celý popis

Uložené v:
Podrobná bibliografia
Vydané v:The American economic review Ročník 98; číslo 4; s. 1443 - 1458
Hlavní autori: Crawford, Vincent P., Gneezy, Uri, Rottenstreich, Yuval
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Nashville American Economic Association 01.09.2008
Predmet:
ISSN:0002-8282, 1944-7981
On-line prístup:Získať plný text
Tagy: Pridať tag
Žiadne tagy, Buďte prvý, kto otaguje tento záznam!
Popis
Shrnutí:Since Schelling, it has often been assumed that players make use of salient decision labels to achieve coordination. Consistent with previous work, we find that given equal payoffs, salient labels yield frequent coordination. However, given even minutely asymmetric payoffs, labels lose much of their effectiveness and miscoordination abounds. This raises questions about the extent to which the effectiveness of focal points based on label salience persists beyond the special case of symmetric games. The patterns of miscoordination we observe vary with the magnitude of payoff differences in intricate ways that suggest nonequilibrium accounts based on "level-k" thinking and "team reasoning."
Bibliografia:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ObjectType-Article-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.98.4.1443