From the Introduction. Moving beyond the development of game theory and the exercise games for managers that inspired them, two papers – Hoggatt (1959) and Sauermann and Selten (1959, 1960) – explicitly set up controlled experiments on quantity adjusters (or Cournot) oligopolists. "The experiment can be constructed in such a way that decision-making can be observed throughout, and the assumptions about human behavior implicit in economic theories can be tested." claim Sauermann and Selten (1960, p. 85). "We focus on using game situations as a research tool for studying the behavior of human beings in conflict situations" asserts Hoggatt (1959, p. 192). With these papers, experimental research on oligopolies was born, reaching maturity soon, with Fouraker, Shubik, and Siegel (1961), and Fouraker and Siegel (1963).