The agencies method for coalition formation in experimental games.

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 non-cooperative 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 conce

SUBMITTER: Nash JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3528550 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature