Slow to Anger and Fast to Forgive: Cooperation in an Uncertain World

Drew Fudenberg, David G. Rand and Anna Dreber

American Economic Review, 2012, vol. 102, issue 2, 720-49

Abstract: We study the experimental play of the repeated prisoner's dilemma when intended actions are implemented with noise. In treatments where cooperation is an equilibrium, subjects cooperate substantially more than in treatments without cooperative equilibria. In all settings there was considerable strategic diversity, indicating that subjects had not fully learned the distribution of play. Furthermore, cooperative strategies yielded higher payoffs than uncooperative strategies in the treatments with cooperative equilibria. In these treatments successful strategies were "lenient" in not retaliating for the first defection, and many were "forgiving" in trying to return to cooperation after inflicting a punishment. (JEL C72, C73, D81)

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (174)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.102.2.720 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/april2012/20100629_data.zip dataset accompanying article (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Slow to Anger and Fast to Forgive: Cooperation in an Uncertain World (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:102:y:2012:i:2:p:720-49

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().