An experimental study of adaptive behavior in an oligopolistic market game

Abstract.

We consider an oligopolistic market game, in which the players are competing firms in the same market of a homogeneous consumption good. The consumer side is represented by a fixed demand function. The firms decide how much to produce of a perishable consumption good, and they decide upon a number of information signals to be sent into the population in order to attract customers. Due to the minimal information provided, the players do not have a well-specified model of their environment. Our main objective is to characterize the adaptive behavior of the players in such a situation.