Managing Growth to Achieve Efficient Coordination in Large Groups
实验发现，大群体在最小努力协调博弈中难以高效协调，但通过从小群体开始逐步增加成员并让新成员知晓历史，可以培育出高效协调的大群体。
Previous experiments using the minimum-effort coordination game reveal a striking regularity—large groups never coordinate efficiently. Given the frequency with which large real-world groups, such as firms, face similarly difficult coordination problems, this poses an important question: Why do we observe large, successfully coordinated groups in the real world when they are so difficult to create in the laboratory? This paper presents one reason. The experiments show that, even though efficient coordination does not occur in groups that start off large, efficiently coordinated large groups can be “grown.” By starting with small groups that find it easier to coordinate, we can add entrants—who are aware of the group's history—to create efficiently coordinated large groups. This represents the first experimental demonstration of large groups tacitly coordinated at high levels of efficiency.