Observations on Cooperation

Heller, Yuval and Mohlin, Erik (2015): Observations on Cooperation.

Abstract

We study environments in which agents are randomly matched to play a Prisoner's Dilemma, and each player observes a few of the partner's past actions against previous opponents. We depart from the existing literature in two key respects: (1) we allow a small fraction of the population to be commitment types, and (2) we do not assume a time zero at which the entire community starts to interact. The presence of committed agents destabilizes all previously proposed mechanisms for sustaining cooperation. We present a novel mechanism (involving an essentially unique strategy combination) that sustains stable cooperation in many environments.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Evolutionary stability, random matching, indirect reciprocity, secret handshake, submodularity, image scoring.
• 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; D - Microeconomics > D0 - General > D01 - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles

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