Equilibrium and reinforcement learning in private-information games: An experimental study

This paper examines the abilities of standard game-theoretic solution concepts (static Nash equilibrium) and a simple model of individual learning to describe subject behavior in an experiment involving private-information games with mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium outcomes. The experimental data are compared in several ways with the predictions of static Nash equilibrium and the quite different predictions of the learning model, which is based on the models of Roth and Erev (1995), (Games and Economic Behavior, Special Issue: Nobel symposium, vol. 8, pp. 164-212), Nash equilibrium does not adequately describe subject behavior, whereas the learning model performs well in describing aspects of the evolution in behavior over time. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.