Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-wjqwx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-09T02:44:57.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Do people make strategic commitments? Experimental evidence on strategic information avoidance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Anders U. Poulsen  and
Michael W.M. Roos
Anders U. Poulsen*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Michael W.M. Roos
Affiliation:
Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
*
e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Game theory predicts that players make strategic commitments that may appear counter-intuitive. We conducted an experiment to see if people make a counter-intuitive but strategically optimal decision to avoid information. The experiment is based on a sequential Nash demand game in which a responding player can commit ahead of the game not to see what a proposing player demanded. Our data show that subjects do, but only after substantial time, learn to make the optimal strategic commitment. We find only weak evidence of physical timing effects.

Keywords

Strategic commitmentCommitmentBargainingStrategic value of informationPhysical timing effectsEndogenous timingExperiment

JEL classification

D63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement C78: Bargaining Theory • Matching Theory C90: General C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior D80: General C72: Noncooperative Games
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 206 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Poulsen is member of the Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science at the University of East Anglia, and affiliate researcher at the Centre for Experimental Economics at University of Copenhagen.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi: 10.1007/s10683-010-9236-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Aghion, P., & Bolton, P. (1987). Contracts as a barrier to entry. American Economic Review, 77(3), 388401.Google Scholar
Bagwell, K. (1995). Commitment and observability in games. Games and Economic Behavior, 8(2), 271280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bensaid, B., & Gary-Bobo, R. (1993). Commitment value of contracts under renegotiation constraints. Econometrica, 61(6), 1423–1429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Porath, E., & Dekel, E. (1992). Co-ordination and the potential for sacrifice. Journal of Economic Theory, 57(1), 36–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brocas, I., & Carrillo, J. (2007). Influence through ignorance. The RAND Journal of Economics, 38(4), 931–947.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Damme, E. (1989). Stable equilibria and forward induction. Journal of Economic Theory, 48(2), 476296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Datta Mago, S., & Dechenaux, E. (2009). Price leadership and firm size asymmetry: an experimental analysis. Experimental Economics, 12(3), 289–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fershtman, C., & Gneezy, U. (2001). Strategic delegation: an experiment. RAND Journal of Economics, 32(2), 352–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fershtman, C., & Kalai, E. (1997). Unobserved delegation. International Economic Review, 38(4), 763774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, S., Güth, W., Müller, W., & Stiehler, A. (2006). From ultimatum to Nash bargaining: theory and experimental evidence. Experimental Economics, 9(1), 17–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, U. (2007). z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 10(2), 171–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fonseca, M., Huck, S., & Normann, H. (2005). Playing Cournot although they shouldn't. Economic Theory, 25(3), 669–677.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fonseca, M., Müller, W., & Normann, H. (2006). Endogenous timing in duopoly: experimental evidence. International Journal of Game Theory, 34, 443–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greiner, B. (2004). An online recruitment system for economic experiments. In Kremer, K. & Macho, V. (Eds.), Forschung und wissenschaftliches Rechnen 2003. GWDG Bericht 63 (pp. 79–93). Göttingen: Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung.Google Scholar
Güth, W., Huck, S., & Rapoport, A. (1998). The limitations of the positional order effect: can it support silent threats and non-equilibrium behavior? Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 34(2), 313–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Güth, W., Müller, W., & Spiegel, Y (2006). Noisy leadership: an experimental approach. Games and Economic Behavior, 57(1), 37–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, J., & Slutsky, S. (1990). Endogenous timing in duopoly games: Stackelberg or Cournot equilibria. Games and Economic Behavior, 2(1), 29–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauk, E., & Hurkens, S. (2001). Secret information acquisition in Cournot markets. Economic Theory, 18(3), 661–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huck, S., & Müller, W. (2000). Perfect versus imperfect observability—an experimental test of Bagwell's result. Games and Economic Behavior, 31(2), 174–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huck, S., & Müller, W. (2005). Burning money and (pseudo) first-mover advantages: an experimental study on forward induction. Games and Economic Behavior, 51(1), 109–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurkens, S., & Vulkan, N. (2006). Endogenous private information structures. European Economic Review, 50(1), 35–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loewenstein, G., Moore, D., & Weber, R. (2006). Misperceiving the value of information in predicting the performance of others. Experimental Economics, 9(3), 281–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nash, J. (1953). Two person cooperative games. Econometrica, 21(1), 128–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulsen, A., & Tan, J. H. W. (2007). Information acquisition in the ultimatum game: an experimental study. Experimental Economics, 10(4), 391–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santos-Pinto, L. (2008). Making sense of the experimental evidence on endogenous timing in duopoly markets. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 68(3-4), 657–666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, T. (1960). The strategy of conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, R., Camerer, C., & Knez, M. (2006). Timing and virtual observability in ultimatum bargaining and “weak link” coordination games. Experimental Economics, 7(1), 25–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooldridge, J. M. (2002). Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Poulsen and Roos supplementary material

Experimental Instructions
Download Poulsen and Roos supplementary material(File)
File 102.1 KB