Can You Guess the Game You're Playing?

Abstract:     
Recently there has been much work on learning in games. However, learning usually means learning about behavior of opponents rather than learning about the game as such. Here we test in an experiment whether players in a repeated encounter can learn the payoff structures of their opponents by rewarding subjects for correct guesses. Our data allows to construct the games that subjects perceive to be playing, the subjective games. We find that subjects often play according to an equilibrium in their subjective game. However, subjective games frequently differ from the games actually played.

Keywords: learning, subjective games, experiments

JEL Classification: C72, C92, D83

Accepted Paper Series