On the basis of evidence of past oligopoly experiments, we argue that there is often significantly more tacit collusion in Bertrand price-choice than in Cournot quantity-choice markets.
27 August 2015 in Journal of the European Economic Association
We propose a novel experimental method that disentangles strategically- and non-strategically-motivated behavior. We apply it to an indefinitely-repeated prisoner's dilemma game to observe simultaneously how the same individual behaves in situations with future interaction and in situations with no future interaction, while controlling for expectations. This method allows us to determine the extent to which strategically-cooperating individuals are responsible for the observed pattern of cooperation in experiments with repeated interaction, including the so-called endgame effect. Our results indicate that the most common motive for cooperation in repeated games is strategic.
Evolutionary explanations of anger as a commitment device hinge on two key assumptions. The first is that it is predictable, ex ante, whether someone will get angry when feeling that he or she has been badly treated. The second is that anger is associated with destructive behavior. We test the validity of these two assumptions. We collected photos of responders in an ultimatum game before they were informed about the game that they would be playing, and we filmed responders with webcams during play. We then showed pairs of photos consisting of one responder who rejected and one responder who accepted (a low offer) to an independent group of observers. We find that observers are better than chance at detecting who rejected the low offer; they do 10% better than random guessing would. We also find that anger at receiving a low offer is associated with rejection.Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2727 .This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.
We use data from experiments on finitely repeated dilemma games with fixed matching to investigate the effect of different types of information on cooperation. The data come from 71 studies using the voluntary contributions paradigm, covering 122 data points, and from 18 studies on decision-making in oligopoly, covering another 50 data points. We find similar effects in the two sets of experimental games. We find that transparency about what everyone in a group earns reduces contributions to the public good, as well as the degree of collusion in oligopoly markets. In contrast, transparency about choices tends to lead to an increase in contributions and collusion, although the size of this effect varies somewhat between the two settings. Our results are potentially useful for policy making, because they provide guidance on the type of information to target in order to stimulate or limit cooperation.