Point Beauty Contest: Measuring the Distribution of Focal Points on the Individual Level [Dataset]

DOI

We propose the Point Beauty Contest, a mechanism to identify the distribution of focal points on the individual level. By contrast to conventional coordination, subjects coordinate by the distribution of points. This allows for nuanced coordination strategies, as subjects can invest in multiple alternatives at the same time and weigh their choice. A subject´s strategy choice then reveals her perception of the distribution of focal points. In an experiment on the elicitation of social norms, we compare the mechanism with conventional coordination. The data confirms the theoretical predictions regarding coordination behavior and demonstrates that the proposed technique is suited to identify the distribution of focal points on the individual level. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the proposed mechanism identifies focal points on the population level more efficiently than conventional coordination. We point to the possibility of using the mechanism as a simple method to directly measure strategic uncertainty.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.11588/data/PA87NV
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00027202
Metadata Access https://heidata.uni-heidelberg.de/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.11588/data/PA87NV
Provenance
Creator Schmidt, Robert (ORCID: 0000-0003-1552-781X)
Publisher heiDATA
Contributor Schmidt, Robert; heiDATA: Heidelberg Research Data Repository
Publication Year 2019
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
OpenAccess true
Contact Schmidt, Robert (Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics, Heidelberg University, Germany)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/pdf; text/tab-separated-values; text/plain; application/zip; application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet; application/x-stata-syntax
Size 139049; 151799; 78839; 77596; 37836; 40903; 142044; 156907; 12659; 17521; 8996; 27977; 349; 5098
Version 1.0
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences