Predictive Repeated Game Theory : Measures and Experiments ∗

One of the fundamental results in repeated games is the Folk theorem, which predicts a plethora of equilibrium outcomes. Many have argued that this extreme number of equilibria is a virtue, as it can explain a variety of different behaviors. However, this result leaves us with almost no predictive power. This paper provides measures for evaluating the predictive power of a theory given experimental data. After running experiments with human subjects in the experimental laboratory, we use these measures to compare a variety of different theories including Mathevet (2014)’s axiomatic approach, and Ioannou and Romero (2014)’s learning model.