Turn-taking in finitely repeated symmetric games: experimental evidence

In this paper we investigate the emergence of turn taking in three finitely repeated games: (i) an allocation game, (ii) a low conflict dominant strategy equilibrium (DSE) game and (iii) a high conflict DSE game in an experimental setting. The experiments are run with and without cheap talk communication between participants. In order to develop experimental conjectures and interpret results we develop a theoretical analysis which incorporates the presence of three types of participant: (i) cooperative, (ii) competitive and (iii) self seeking. Based on our theoretical analysis we hypothesize that turn taking may be exhibited experimentally in all three of the games we study when some participants have cooperative preferences. We find experimentally that turn taking emerges in all treatments, and its incidence is qualitatively similar in the allocation and DSE games. While cheap talk increased the rate of cooperative behavior and eliminated competitive behaviour, it had at most a small effect on self seeking behavior. The degree of conflict also had a small effect on the prevalence of turn taking. We observed, using a repeated matching experiment for the high conflict DSE games, that a large majority of participants' behavior can be attributed to one of the three types.