Do People Make Strategic Moves? Experimental Evidence on Strategic Information Avoidance

Poulsen, Anders; Roos, Michael W. M.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1371434

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Do People Make Strategic Moves? Experimental Evidence on Strategic Information Avoidance

Univ. of Copenhagen Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper No. 09-06

20 Pages Posted: 1 Apr 2009

See all articles by Anders Poulsen

Michael W. M. Roos

University of Dortmund - Lehrstuhl für Wirtschafts-un Sozialstatistik

Date Written: February 23, 2009

Abstract

The strategic commitment moves that game theory predicts players make may sometimes seem counter-intuitive. We therefore conducted an experiment to see if people make the predicted strategic move. The experiment uses a simple bargaining situation. A player can make a strategic move of committing to not seeing what another player will demand. Our data show that subjects do, but only after substantial time, learn to make the predicted strategic move. We find only weak evidence of physical timing effects.

Keywords: strategic moves, commitment, bargaining, strategic value of information, physical timing effects, endogenous timing, experiment

JEL Classification: C72, C78, C90, C92, D63, D80

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Poulsen, Anders and Roos, Michael W. M., Do People Make Strategic Moves? Experimental Evidence on Strategic Information Avoidance (February 23, 2009). Univ. of Copenhagen Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper No. 09-06, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1371434 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1371434