What Strategies Can Support the Evolutionary Emergence of Cooperation?

Jack Hirshleifer and Juan Martinez Coll

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1988, vol. 32, issue 2, 367-398

Abstract: Axelrod found TIT-FOR-TAT to be a highly successful strategy in the Prisoners' Dilemma payoff environment. He concluded that a natural selection process in favor of TIT-FOR-TAT explains the evolutionary emergence of cooperation. This article shows that, contrary to Axelrod, TIT-FOR-TAT does not approach 100% fixation in the population. More generally, TIT-FOR-TAT is not a robustly successful strategy if Axelrod's exact assumptions do not apply—for example, if there is a cost of complexity or a probability of error, or when players compete in an elimination contest rather than a round-robin tournament. In fact, it is unreasonable to expect any single strategy to win out in evolutionary competition. Constructively, we show that the presence of a PUNISHER strategy typically generates, consistent with observation, an interior equilibrium in which more and less cooperative strategies simultaneously coexist.

Date: 1988
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:32:y:1988:i:2:p:367-398

DOI: 10.1177/0022002788032002006

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