Adaptive Incrementalism and Complexity: Experiments with Two-Person Cooperative Signaling Games
通过两人古诺双头垄断实验，研究有限信息和复杂性如何影响决策者的渐进适应行为，对理解分散决策机制有用。
The literature on incrementalism is concerned with decentralized adaptation by decision makers with limited information to the complexity of the decision environment. However, the specific aspects of limited information and complexity are often left unexamined, leaving conclusions ambiguous. In order to understand better the effect of limited information and complexity on decentralized decision making, we design an experimental game in which subjects play in the basic Cournot duopoly setting. This setting is similar to the incremental decision example given by Lindblom (1965). The game provides the players with no information about what each player's decisions are other than the history of their mutual interaction, thus guaranteeing imperfect information. We also manipulate two factors of complexity: the risk of making a bad decision and the strategic uncertainty of a particular course of action. Through these manipulations, we seek to induce and better understand incrementally adaptive behavior by the participants.