The Analogical Foundations of Cooperation

Pré-publication, Document de travail: We offer an approach to cooperation in repeated games of private monitoring in which players construct models of their opponents' behavior by observing the frequencies of play in a record of past plays of the game in which actions but not signals are recorded. Players construct models of their opponent's behavior by grouping the histories in the record into a relatively small number of analogy classes to which they attach probabilities of cooperation. The incomplete record and the limited number of analogy classes lead to misspecified models that provide the incentives to cooperate. We provide conditions for the existence of equilibria supporting cooperation and equilibria supporting high payoffs for some nontrivial analogy partitions.

Auteur(s)

Philippe Jehiel, Larry Samuelson

Date de publication
  • 2022
Mots-clés JEL
C70 C72 C73
Mots-clés
  • Analogical reasoning
  • Cooperation
  • Prisoners’ dilemma
  • Repeated game
  • Private monitoring Analogical reasoning
  • Private monitoring
Référence interne
  • PSE Working Papers n°2022-23
Pages
  • 47 p.
Version
  • 1