Motives for Cooperation in the One-Shot Prisoner’s Dilemma

Mark Schneider () and Timothy Shields
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Mark Schneider: Culverhouse College of Business, University of Alabama

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: We investigate the motives for cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). A prior study finds that cooperation rates in one-shot PD games can be ranked empirically by the social surplus from cooperation. That study employs symmetric payoffs from cooperation in simultaneous PD games. Hence, in that setting, it is not possible to discern the motives for cooperation since three prominent social welfare criteria, social surplus (efficiency) preferences, Rawlsian maximin preferences, and inequity aversion make the same predictions. In the present paper, we conduct an experiment to identify which of these social preferences best explains differences in cooperation rates and to study the effects of the risk of non-cooperation.

Keywords: Cooperation; Prisoner’s Dilemma; Inequity aversion; Social surplus; Social preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D81 D82 M40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chu:wpaper:22-07

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