Individual Learning in Games
Teck‐Hua Ho · The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics · 2008
Economic experiments on strategic games typically generate data that, in early rounds, violate standard equilibrium predictions. However, subjects normally change their behaviour over time in response to experience. The study of learning in games is about how this behavioural change works empirically. This empirical investigation also has a theoretical payoff: if subjects’ behaviour converges to an equilibrium, the underlying learning model becomes a theory of equilibration. In games with multiple equilibria, this same model can also serve as a theory of equilibrium selection, a long-standing challenge for theorists.