An experimental investigation of stochastic adjustment dynamics

This paper describes an experiment designed to test which, if any, stochastic adjustment dynamic most accurately captures the behaviour of a large population. The setting is a large population coordination game in which two different groups have differing preferences over equilibria. We find that subject behaviour is highly consistent with the myopic best-response learning rule with deviations from this rule that are (i) dependent on the myopic best-response payoff but not on the deviation payoff, and (ii) directed in the sense of being group-dependent. We also find a time trend to deviations, with the magnitude tapering off as time progresses. This is in contrast to much of the theoretical literature that supposes a variety of other specifications of learning rules and both time-independent and payoff-dependent explanations for deviations.