Same Game, New Tricks

Andrzej Pelc and Krzysztof J. Pelc
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Andrzej Pelc: Département d'informatique Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, Québec
Krzysztof J. Pelc: Department of Government Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2009, vol. 53, issue 5, 774-793

Abstract: The aim of this article is to distinguish between strategies in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma on the basis of their relative performance in a given population set. We first define a natural order on such strategies that disregards isolated disturbances, by using the limit of time-average payoffs. This order allows us to consider one strategy as strictly better than another in some population of strategies. We then determine a strategy σ to be ‘‘robust,’’ if in any population consisting of copies of two types of strategies, σ itself and some other strategy τ, the strategy σ is never worse than τ. We present a large class of such robust strategies. Strikingly, robustness can accommodate an arbitrary level of generosity, conditional on the strength of subsequent retaliation; and it does not require symmetric retaliation. Taken together, these findings allow us to design strategies that significantly lessen the problem of noise, without forsaking performance. Finally, we show that no strategy exhibits robustness in all population sets of three or more strategy types.

Keywords: Game Theory; Prisoner’s Dilemma; robust strategies; retaliation; evolutionary stability. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:53:y:2009:i:5:p:774-793

DOI: 10.1177/0022002709339045

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