publications | Johannes Leutgeb

2023

Dataset and Code for ’How Trump Triumphed: Multi-Candidate Primaries with Buffoons’

Micael Castanheira, Steffen Huck, Johannes Leutgeb, and Andrew Schotter

Apr 2023

Abstract Link

This is code and data for the paper "How Trump Triumphed: Multi-Candidate Primaries with Buffoons" by Micael Castanheira, Steffen Huck, Johannes Leutgeb, and Andrew Schotter, forthcoming in the European Economic Review.
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.’
How Trump triumphed: Multi-candidate primaries with buffoons

Micael Castanheira, Steffen Huck, Johannes Leutgeb, and Andrew Schotter

European Economic Review, Aug 2023

Abstract Link

While people on all sides of the political spectrum were amazed that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination this paper theorizes that Trump’s victory was not a crazy event but rather the equilibrium outcome of a multi-candidate race where one candidate, the buffoon, is viewed as likely to self-destruct and hence unworthy of attack. Our model conceptualizes primaries as a truel (a three-way duel); we solve for its equilibrium, and test its implications in a laboratory experiment. We find that people recognize a buffoon when they see one and aim their attacks elsewhere with the unfortunate consequence that the buffoon has an enhanced probability of winning. This result is strongest amongst those subjects who demonstrate an ability to best respond, suggesting that our results would only be stronger when the game is played by experts and for higher stakes.

2020

Games played through agents in the laboratory — a test of Prat & Rustichini’s model

Ludwig Ensthaler, Steffen Huck, and Johannes Leutgeb

Games and Economic Behavior, Jan 2020

Abstract Link

From the regulation of sports to lawmaking in parliament, in many situations one group of people (“agents”) make decisions that affect the payoffs of others (“principals”) who may offer action-contingent transfers in order to sway the agents’ decisions. Prat and Rustichini (2003) characterize pure-strategy equilibria of such Games Played Through Agents. Specifically, they predict the equilibrium outcome in pure strategies to be efficient. We test the theory in a series of experimental treatments with human principals and computerized agents. The theory predicts remarkably well which actions and outcomes are implemented but subjects’ transfer offers deviate systematically from equilibrium. We show how quantal response equilibrium accounts for the deviations and test its predictions out of sample. Our results show that quantal response equilibrium is particularly well suited for explaining behavior in such games.

2018

Experiments in competition, cooperation, and learning

Johannes Leutgeb

Jan 2018

Link

2017

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.