High-frequency market interactions

2023

1. Learning through period and physical time

   Teresa Backhaus, Steffen Huck, Johannes Leutgeb, and Ryan Oprea

   Games and Economic Behavior, Sep 2023

   Abstract Link

   We demonstrate in a laboratory experiment in which subjects play a two-player Cournot-Tullock game over hundreds of periods of varying length that full accounts of subjects’ learning requires the consideration of, both, ‘period time’ and ‘physical time.’

2017

1. Payoff information hampers the evolution of cooperation

   Steffen Huck, Johannes Leutgeb, and Ryan Oprea

   Nature Communications, May 2017

   Abstract Link

   Human cooperation has been explained through rationality as well as heuristics-based models. Both model classes share the feature that knowledge of payoff functions is weakly beneficial for the emergence of cooperation. Here, we present experimental evidence to the contrary. We let human subjects interact in a competitive environment and find that, in the long run, access to information about own payoffs leads to less cooperative behaviour. In the short run subjects use naive learning heuristics that get replaced by better adapted heuristics in the long run. With more payoff information subjects are less likely to switch to pro-cooperative heuristics. The results call for the development of two-tier models for the evolution of cooperation.