Expert or Victim? How the Way in Which Game Theory Is Taught Affects Payoffs in an Iterated Cournot Game
Anthony J. Evans and Wioletta Nawrot
ESCP Business School, London, UK
Volume 19: 2024, pp. 00-00; ABSTRACT
This paper shares exploratory findings from a classroom study that investigated whether
the sequence in which international students learnt about game theory influenced their performance
while playing an iterated Cournot game. We found that gender has no major impact on cooperative
behaviour, but prior familiarity with the concept of the prisoner’s dilemma coincided with slightly
greater instances of sustained cooperation. The most common outcome across all students was an
inability to identify either the highest mutual payoff (sustained cooperation) or the unilaterally
optimal strategy (defection). The sequence of instruction had a significant impact on student’s
results, and the group that was least likely to find the Nash equilibrium was in fact the group that
was provided the most learning opportunities to identify it. Finally, we found that an exposure to
game theoretic concepts was positively associated with cooperative (i.e. non-selfish) outcomes.
Keywords: Cournot, game theory, Nash equilibrium.
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