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<p class=MsoPlainText>Dear Colleagues, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>We write to invite you to participate in the choice
prediction competitions that will be conducted as part of the special issue of
the journal Games<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>(<a href="http://www.mdpi.com/journal/games/">http://www.mdpi.com/journal/games/</a>)
on “Predicting Behavior in Games”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>(<a href="http://www.mdpi.com/si/games/predict-behavior/">http://www.mdpi.com/si/games/predict-behavior/</a>).
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>You are invited to participate as a competitor, and as an
organizer. Below you can find two calls that clarify this invitation. The
first is the call to participate in the first competition that we organize. The
second is a call to propose and organize your own competition. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Call 1. The first “Games” competition:
Predicting behavior in market entry games.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The first competition focuses on the prediction of
behavior in repeated 4-person market entry games. The organizers first ran (in
March 2010 at Harvard) an experimental study of (40) games that were randomly
selected from a well-defined space of market entry games. The raw experimental
results of this study, referred to as the “estimation experiment,”
are presented in the competition’s website (<a
href="http://sites.google.com/site/gpredcomp/">http://sites.google.com/site/gpredcomp/</a>).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>In addition, the competition website includes the rules
of the competition, and a link to a paper that summarizes the results of the
estimation experiment and explores the value of several baseline models<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>(<a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/117/">http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/117/</a>.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The site explains that the goal of the participants in
the competition is to predict the results of a second experiment. This study,
referred to as the “competition experiment,” will be run by the
organizers in May 2010 (but the results will be kept confidential until 2
September 2010). The competition experiment will use the same method as the
estimation experiment, but will study different games (drawn from the same
space of games) and different subjects.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>To participate in the competition you will have to email
us a computer program (in MATLAB, Visual Basic, or SAS) that reads the
parameters of the games (the incentive structure) as input, and predicts the
main results as output. The program should be an implementation of your
favorite model. To develop and/or estimate your model you are encouraged to
analyze the data of the estimation experiment, and to build on the baseline
models that were posted in the competition website.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The submitted models will be ranked based on the mean
squared deviation between the predictions and the results of the competition
experiment. The prize for the winners will include an invitation to publish a
paper that describes the winning model in Games, and an invitation to a special
workshop.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The submission deadline for this competition is 1
September 2010. You are allowed to submit one model as a first author and to
co-author up to three additional submissions.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Call 2. Invitation to propose and organize a competition.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>You are invited to propose a choice competition to the
special issue of Games.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The proposed competition should focus on interesting
spaces of game, with the hope that they will improve our understanding of the
predictive value of different descriptive models. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The format of the competitions should be similar to the
format of the competition described above. Specifically, they should be based
on two large experimental studies: An estimation experiment, and a competition
experiment. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>The organizers will first run the estimation experiment
(on games that will be randomly selected from a well-defined space of games).
Then, they will post the results on the web, and publish (in Games) a paper
that introduces the competition. The paper should summarize the results of the
estimation experiment, evaluate leading baseline models, and describe the rules
of the competition. The main task in the competition will be to predict
behavior in the competition experiment. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Proposals for organization of competitions should
describe the motivation and the proposed method (including the space of games
you will study). They can use the format of the first five pages of the paper
that describes the introduction to the choice prediction competition for market
entry games that can be found at <a
href="http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/117/">http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/117/</a>.
Please send e-mail proposals and related questions to Ido Erev (<a
href="mailto:erev@tx.technion.ac.il">erev@tx.technion.ac.il</a>).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Best regards, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Ido Erev, Eyal Ert and Al Roth<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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