A Comment on “ How Portable is Level-0 Behavior ? A Test of Level-k Theory in Games with Non-neutral Frames ” by Heap , Rojo-Arjona , and Sugden

Rubinstein and Tversky (1993), Rubinstein, Tversky, and Heller (1996), and Rubinstein (1999) reported experiments that elicited initial responses to coordination, discoordination, and hide and seek games with non-neutral decision labelings, in which behavior responded to labeling. Crawford and Iriberri (2007ab) proposed a level-k model to account for the results for hide and seek games. Heap, Rojo-Arjona, and Sugden (2014) report an experimental test of Crawford and Iriberri’s model, concluding that it lacks portability. This comment seeks to clarify Heap et al.’s interpretation of their results and their account of Crawford and Iriberri’s analysis, and to better identify the way forward.

[1]  R. McKelvey,et al.  Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games , 1995 .

[2]  V. Crawford,et al.  The Power of Focal Points Is Limited: Even Minute Payoff Asymmetry May Yield Large Coordination Failures , 2008 .

[3]  V. Crawford,et al.  Fatal Attraction: Focality, Naivete, and Sophistication in Experimental "Hide-and-Seek" Games , 2007 .

[4]  Miguel A. Costa-Gomes,et al.  Structural Models of Nonequilibrium Strategic Thinking: Theory, Evidence, and Applications , 2013 .

[5]  Roberto A. Weber,et al.  On the Persistence of Strategic Sophistication , 2014, J. Econ. Theory.

[6]  J. Mertens,et al.  ON THE STRATEGIC STABILITY OF EQUILIBRIA , 1986 .

[7]  T. Schelling,et al.  The Strategy of Conflict. , 1961 .

[8]  N. Christenfeld Choices from Identical Options , 1995 .

[9]  Miguel A. Costa-Gomes,et al.  Cognition and Behavior in Two-Person Guessing Games: An Experimental Study , 2003 .

[10]  R. Sugden,et al.  Explaining Focal Points: Cognitive Hierarchy Theory Versus Team Reasoning , 2009 .

[11]  Robert Sugden,et al.  How Portable Is Level-0 Behavior? A Test of Level-k Theory in Games With Non-Neutral Frames , 2014 .

[12]  A. Rapoport,et al.  Mixed strategies in strictly competitive games: A further test of the minimax hypothesis , 1992 .

[13]  B. O'Neill Nonmetric test of the minimax theory of two-person zerosum games. , 1987, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[14]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  Naive Strategies in Competitive Games , 1997 .

[15]  Stefan P. Penczynski,et al.  Out of your mind: Eliciting individual reasoning in one shot games , 2014, Games Econ. Behav..

[16]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  Experience from a Course in Game Theory: Pre- and Post-class Problem Sets as a Didactic Device , 1999 .