Economics, Ethics and the Dilemma in the Prisoner's Dilemmas

Daniel Arce

The American Economist, 2010, vol. 55, issue 1, 49-57

Abstract: This paper contrasts four distinct versions of the Prisoner's Dilemma (the commons, public goods, biological altruism, and biological selfishness) in terms of their ethical content for economic decision making. An argument is made for the restoration of Tucker's third player — as given in the original specification of the game — in order to judge whether a resolution is desirable in economic and business situations that reduce to the Prisoner's Dilemma. Finally, the use of tit-for-tat as a 'solution' to the Prisoner's Dilemma is compared with the practice of business ethics.

Keywords: Game Theory; Prisoner's dilemma; Business ethics; Altruism, Tit-for-tat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/056943451005500106 (text/html)

Related works:
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:sae:amerec:v:55:y:2010:i:1:p:49-57

DOI: 10.1177/056943451005500106

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The American Economist from Sage Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().