Within-Team Competition in the Minimum Effort Coordination Game

Abstract

We report the results of an experiment on a continuous version of the minimum effort coordination game. The introduction of within-team competition significantly increases effort levels relative to a baseline with no competition and increases coordination relative to a secure treatment where the pay-off-dominant equilibrium strategy weakly dominates all other actions. Nonetheless, within-team competition does not prevent subjects from polarizing both in the efficient and the inefficient equilibria.