John Van Huyck's Research Page
I am an economics professor at Texas A&M University, which is located in College Station, TX. My web contains pages on my research and teaching interests in economic science, especially my recent work in game theory and experimental economics. I have been investigating how people learn mutually consistent behavior and constructing a theory of the origin of equilibrium outcomes. This work helps us understand how markets coordinate people's behavior in a many person decentralized economy. My research provides an empirical foundation upon which to construct a useful coordination theory, that is, one that makes effective prescriptions, true descriptions, and accurate predictions.
Some Published Research:
Selection Dynamics and Adaptive Behavior Without Much Information , with R. Battalio and F. Rankin, Economic Theory, 33(1), October 2007, 53-65.
Evidence on Learning in Coordination Games, with R. Battalio and F. Rankin, Experimental Economics, 10(3), September 2007, 205-220.
Estimating Bounded Rationality and Pricing Performance Uncertainty, with C.N. McKinney, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 62(4), April 2007, 625-639.
Does Seeing More Deeply into a Game Actually Increase One's Chances of Winning?, with C.N. McKinney, Experimental Economics, 9(3), September 2006, 297-303.
Credible Assignments and Coordination Failure in Laboratory Public Goods Games, with B. Seely and R. Battalio, Journal of Public Economics, 89(8), August 2005, 1437-1457.
Evidence on the Equivalence of the Strategic and Extensive Form Representation of Games, with D. Cooper, Journal of Economic Theory, 110(2), June 2003, 290-308. [ Data ]
Prudence, Justice, Benevolence, & Sex: Evidence from similar bargaining games, with R. Battalio, Journal of Economic Theory, 104(1), May 2002, 227-246. [Primary Data Set Available]
Tacit Cooperation, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure: Evidence from repeated dominance solvable games, with J. Wildenthal and R. Battalio, Games and Economic Behavior, 38(1), January 2002, 156-175. [Primary Data Set Available]
Optimization Incentives and Coordination Failure in Laboratory Stag Hunt Games, with R. Battalio and L. Samuelson, Econometrica, 69(3), May 2001, 749-764. [Primary Data Set Available]
Coordination Failure in Market Statistic Games, with R. Battalio, to appear in C. Plott and V. Smith, eds., Handbook of Results in Experimental Economics, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2001.
Emergent Conventions in Evolutionary Games, to appear in C. Plott and V. Smith, eds., Handbook of Results in Experimental Economics, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2001.
Strategic Similarity and Emergent Conventions: Evidence from Payoff Perturbed Stag Hunt Games, with F. Rankin and R. Battalio, Games and Economic Behavior. 32(2), August 2000, 315-337. [Primary Data Set Available]
What Does It Take to Eliminate the Use of a Strategy Dominated by a Mixture? with R. Battalio, F. Rankin, Experimental Economics 2(2), December 1999, 129-150. [Primary Data Set Available]
Adaptive Behavior and Coordination Failure, with J. Cook and R. Battalio, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 32, 1997, 483-503. [Primary Data Set Available]
On the Origin of Convention: Evidence From Coordination Games, with R. Battalio and F. Rankin, The Economic Journal, 107(442), May 1997, 576-97. [Primary Data Set Available]
On The Origin of Convention: Evidence From Symmetric Bargaining Games, with R. Battalio, S. Mathur, A. Ortmann and P. Van Huyck, International Journal of Game Theory 24(2), 1995, 187-212. [Primary Data Set Available]
Commitment versus Discretion in the Peasant Dictator Game, with R. Battalio and M. Walters, Games and Economic Behavior 10(1), July 1995, 143-170.
Selection Dynamics, Asymptotic Stability, and Adaptive Behavior with J. Cook and R. Battalio, Journal of Political Economy 102(5), October 1994, 975-1005.
Asset Markets as an Equilibrium Selection Mechanism: coordination failure, game form auctions, and forward induction. with R. Battalio and R. Beil, Games and Economic Behavior, 5(3), July 1993, 485-504.
Nominal Sovereign Debt, Risk Shifting, and Reputation, with H. Grossman, Journal of Economics and Business 45(3&4), August 1993, 341-352.
Central Bank Secrecy, Interest Rates and Monetary Control, with T. Cosimano, Economic Inquiry, 31(3), July 1993, 370-382.
Credible Assignments in Coordination Games, with A. Gillette and R. Battalio, Games and Economic Behavior, 4(4), 1992, 606-626.
History's Role in Coordinating Decentralized Allocation Decisions: Laboratory Evidence on Repeated Binary Allocation Games, with D. Meyer, R. Battalio and T.R. Saving, Journal of Political Economy, 100(2), April 1992, 292-316.
Strategic Uncertainty, Equilibrium Selection, and Coordination Failure in Average Opinion Games, with R. Battalio and R. Beil, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(3), August 1991, 885-911.
Tacit Coordination Games, Strategic Uncertainty, and Coordination Failure, with R. Battalio and R. Beil, American Economic Review, March 1990, 234-248. [Primary Data Set Available]
Contact Information:
Surface-mail: Department of Economics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4228
Phone: 979-845-7340
Fax: 979-847-8757
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank David Levine for his advice, Al Roth for his example, and Eric Battalio for his networking help. The wonderful people of the great State of Texas have provided me with the opportunity to publish on the web. The National Science Foundation and Texas Advanced Research Program have provided me with resources to create content worth publishing.
Usage: Between January 1, 2000 and July 31, 2001 the ERL web site received a total of 191,471 hits. Of these, 32,912 hits were from recognized index robots and local users. The remaining 158,559 hits were from 24,571 unique IP addresses who completed 6,445 transfers of PDF versions of my research papers to these 90 countries.