Beatable Imitation in Symmetric Games with Perturbed Payoffs

Tsakas, Nikolas (2014): Beatable Imitation in Symmetric Games with Perturbed Payoffs.

Abstract

In a recent paper, Duersch et.al (2012) showed that in a rather broad class of repeated symmetric two-player games, a player who uses the simple "imitate-if-better" heuristic cannot be subject to a money pump. In this paper, we extend the analysis to games with randomly perturbed payoffs and we show that this result is not robust to, even arbitrarily small, payoff perturbations. In particular, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition that characterizes the class of perturbed games in which the imitator can be subject to a money pump.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Imitate-if-better, Repeated Games, Symmetric Games, Relative Payoffs, Robustness, Perturbations.
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C72 - Noncooperative Games; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C73 - Stochastic and Dynamic Games ; Evolutionary Games ; Repeated Games

References

DUERSCH, P., OECHSSLER, J. AND SCHIPPER, B.C. (2012). Unbeatable Imitation, Games and Economic Behavior 76(1), 88–96.

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