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Cooperation in a repeated game with random payment function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Ilan Eshel
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Daphna Weinshall*
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
*
Postal address: Department of Statistics, School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Abstract

A model of cooperation versus defection in a sequence of games is analysed under the assumptions that the rules of the game are randomly changed from one encounter to another, that the decisions are to be made each time anew, according to the (random) rules of the specific local game, and that the result of one such game affects the ability of a player to participate and thus, cooperate in the next game. Under plausible assumptions, it is shown that all Nash solutions of the supergame determine cooperation over a non-degenerate range of rules, determining encounters of the prisoner's dilemma type.

Type
Research Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 1988 

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Footnotes

Research partly supported by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, grant 8500021.

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