Coordination, Focal Points and Voting in Strategic Situations: A Natural Experiment

33 Pages Posted: 25 Feb 2009 Last revised: 3 Mar 2009

See all articles by Ganna Pogrebna

Ganna Pogrebna

University of Bonn - Institute of Business Administration I

Pavlo R. Blavatskyy

Montpellier Business School

Date Written: February 24, 2009

Abstract

This paper studies coordination in a multi-stage elimination tournament with large monetary incentives and a diversified subject pool drawn from the adult British population. In the tournament, members of an ad hoc team earn money by answering general knowledge questions and then eliminate one contestant by plurality voting without prior communication. We find that in the early rounds of the tournament, contestants use a focal principle and coordinate on one of the multiple Nash equilibria in pure strategies by eliminating the weakest member of the team. However, in the later rounds, contestants switch to playing a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium.

Keywords: Coordination, focal point, voting in strategic situations

JEL Classification: C72, C93, D72

Suggested Citation

Pogrebna, Ganna and Blavatskyy, Pavlo R., Coordination, Focal Points and Voting in Strategic Situations: A Natural Experiment (February 24, 2009). Public Choice, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1348524 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1348524

Ganna Pogrebna (Contact Author)

University of Bonn - Institute of Business Administration I ( email )

Adenauerallee 24-42
D-53113 Bonn
Germany

Pavlo R. Blavatskyy

Montpellier Business School ( email )

2300 Avenue des Moulins
Montpellier, 34080
France

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