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Connected Coordination

Network Structure and Group Coordination

University of California, San Diego

Ramamohan Paturi

University of California, San Diego

Nicholas Weller

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Networks can affect a group’s ability to solve a coordination problem. We use laboratory experiments to study the conditions under which groups of participants can solve coordination games. We investigate a variety of different network structures, and we also investigate coordination games with symmetric and asymmetric payoffs. Our results show that network connections facilitate coordination in both symmetric and asymmetric games. Most significantly, we find that an increase in the number of connections improves coordination even when payoffs are highly asymmetric. These results shed light on the conditions that may facilitate coordination in real-world networks.

Key Words: social networks • game theory • coordination problems • elections • policy implementation • experimental design

American Politics Research, Vol. 37, No. 5, 899-920 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X09337184


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