In search of experimental support for an asymmetric equilibria solution in symmetric investment games

Abstract

In one of their experimental studies, Rapoport and Amaldoss [Rapoport, A., Amaldoss, W., 2000. Mixed strategies and iterative elimination of strongly dominated strategies: an experimental investigation of states of knowledge. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 42, 483–521] evaluate the behavior of subjects in a two-person investment game with symmetric players using the symmetric (completely) mixed-strategy equilibrium solution as the normative benchmark. Dechenaux et al. [Dechenaux, E., Kovenock, D., Lugovskyy, V., 2006. Caps on bidding in all-pay auctions: comments on the experiments of A. Rapoport and W. Amaldoss. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 61, 276–283] claim additional support for an alternating (asymmetric) equilibria solution. However, both aggregate and individual level analyses of our data soundly reject the asymmetric alternating equilibria solution.