Universität zu Köln

Nash, John F., Jr., Nagel, Rosemarie ORCID: 0000-0001-6599-0664, Ockenfels, Axel and Selten, Reinhard (2012). The agencies method for coalition formation in experimental games. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 109 (50). S. 20358 - 20364. WASHINGTON: NATL ACAD SCIENCES. ISSN 0027-8424

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Abstract

In society, power is often transferred to another person or group. A previous work studied the evolution of cooperation among robot players through a coalition formation game with a noncooperative procedure of acceptance of an agency of another player. Motivated by this previous work, we conduct a laboratory experiment on finitely repeated three-person coalition formation games. Human players with different strength according to the coalition payoffs can accept a transfer of power to another player, the agent, who then distributes the coalition payoffs. We find that the agencies method for coalition formation is quite successful in promoting efficiency. However, the agent faces a tension between short-term incentives of not equally distributing the coalition payoff and the long-term concern to keep cooperation going. In a given round, the strong player in our experiment often resolves this tension approximately in line with the Shapley value and the nucleolus. Yet aggregated over all rounds, the payoff differences between players are rather small, and the equal division of payoffs predicts about 80% of all groups best. One reason is that the voting procedure appears to induce a balance of power, independent of the individual player's strength: Selfish subjects tend to be voted out of their agency and are further disciplined by reciprocal behaviors.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Nash, John F., Jr. UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Nagel, Rosemarie UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-6599-0664 UNSPECIFIED Ockenfels, Axel UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Selten, Reinhard UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-476778
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.1216361109
Journal or Publication Title:	Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.
Volume:	109
Number:	50
Page Range:	S. 20358 - 20364
Date:	2012
Publisher:	NATL ACAD SCIENCES
Place of Publication:	WASHINGTON
ISSN:	0027-8424
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language COORDINATION GAMES; BAYESIAN PLAYERS; INFORMATION; COMPETITION; BEHAVIOR Multiple languages Multidisciplinary Sciences Multiple languages
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/47677