What is one way of creating a series of one-shot games in the lab? What is the difference between stranger matching, perfect stranger matching and fixed matching?

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The Answer is One way of creating a series of one-shot games in the lab is by using experimental economics techniques to set up controlled environments where participants engage in isolated decision-making scenarios. In these scenarios, participants are typically given a set of instructions and must make decisions that often involve allocating resources or choosing strategies that affect their own payoffs and potentially the payoffs of others. Each game is played only once with each set of participants to ensure that the decisions are not influenced by past interactions or future expectations, hence the term "one-shot."

In experimental settings, the way participants are matched to play these games can significantly affect the outcomes and interpretations of the results. There are several matching protocols that researchers use:

1. **Stranger Matching**: Under stranger matching, participants are paired with different individuals in each round of the game without any repetition. This means that each participant interacts with someone they have not interacted with before in the experiment. This method ensures that the behavior in each round is not influenced by previous interactions with the same partner, which is useful for studying behavior in a one-shot interaction context.

2. **Perfect Stranger Matching**: Perfect stranger matching is a stricter form of stranger matching. In this protocol, not only does each participant get matched with a new individual in each round, but also the participants are ensured never to encounter each other again in any future rounds. This method is often used to eliminate any possible learning or reputation effects that might occur if participants expect to meet again, even if not immediately.

3. **Fixed Matching**: Fixed matching, on the other hand, involves participants being paired with the same partner for all rounds of the game. This setup allows for the study of repeated interactions and the development of strategies over time, such as reciprocity, trust, and reputation building. It is not typically used for one-shot games, as it introduces the potential for behavior to be influenced by the relationship between participants over multiple rounds.

Each of these matching protocols serves different research purposes. Stranger and perfect stranger matching are more aligned with the concept of one-shot games, as they minimize the influence of repeated interactions on decision-making. Fixed matching is more suitable for studying repeated game scenarios and long-term strategy development. When designing an experiment, researchers must carefully choose the matching protocol that best fits their research question and the theoretical considerations of the study.

What Is One Way of Creating a Series of One-Shot