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Teaching Nash equilibrium and dominance: A classroom experiment on the beauty contest

Authors

Alba-Fernandez, Virtudes , BRAÑAS GARZA, PABLO ERNESTO, Jimenez-Jimenez, Francisca , Rodero-Cosano, Javier

External publication

Si

Means

J. Econ. Educ.

Scope

Article

Nature

Científica

JCR Quartile

SJR Quartile

JCR Impact

0.211

SJR Impact

0.258

Publication date

01/01/2006

ISI

000239734400004

Abstract

The authors' aim in this article was to show how the use of classroom experiments may be a good pedagogical tool to teach the Nash equilibrium (NE) concept. The basic game is a version of the beauty contest game (BCG), a simple guessing game in which repetition lets students react to other players' choices and converge iteratively to the equilibrium solution. The authors perform this experiment with undergraduate students with no previous training in game theory. After four rounds, they observe a clear decreasing tendency in the average submitted number in all groups. Thus, the findings show that by playing a repeated BCG, students quickly learn how to reach the NE solution.

Keywords

beauty contest game; classroom experiments; Nash equilibrium; teaching

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