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When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory

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Abstract

Coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria have attracted major attention over the past two decades. Two early path-breaking sets of experimental studies were widely interpreted as suggesting that coordination failure is a common phenomenon in the laboratory. We identify the major determinants that seem to affect the incidence, and/or emergence, of coordination failure in the lab and review critically the existing experimental studies on coordination games with Pareto-ranked equilibria since that early evidence emerged. We conclude that there are many ways to engineer coordination successes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law and Management, University of Perugia, Via Pascoli, 20, 06123, Perugia, Italy

    Giovanna Devetag

  2. CERGE-EI, Charles University Prague and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Politickych veznu 7, 111 21, Prague, Czech Republic

    Andreas Ortmann

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  1. Giovanna Devetag
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  2. Andreas Ortmann
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Correspondence to Giovanna Devetag.

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Devetag, G., Ortmann, A. When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory. Exp Econ 10, 331–344 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-007-9178-9

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