Coordination in "Critical Mass" Games: An Experimental Study

By Giovanna Devetag

Abstract

In this work we present experimental results on a tacit coordination game with Pareto-ranked equilibria designed to reflect economic decisions characterized by "critical mass " and "increasing returns" phenomena. Different information conditions are tested with groups of seven players who play the game repeatedly. Our results show that both the dynamics of play and the limiting outcomes strongly vary depending on the amount of information available to players. In particular, in the presence of full information about the distribution of players' choices after each round, convergence to the payoff-dominant equilibrium is often observed. When players are only informed about their own payoffs, interaction always results in disequilibrium outcomes. Providing players with information about the median of previous period choices results in coordination failure. Finally, the presence of increasing returns in the number of players choosing the same action increases the speed of convergence to the payoff dominant equilibrium.

JEL codes: C72, C92