Trusting a Double Agent

William C. Grant

Defence and Peace Economics, 2021, vol. 32, issue 8, 941-955

Abstract: We analyze trust in a game with a double agent and two adversarial intelligence organizations. Greater trust by one organization makes the agent more inclined to align against that organization because the intelligence advantage sought by the agent must come at the expense of a trustor. Conversely, trusting less than the rival organization makes the agent more tempted to double-cross the rival. We identify conditions for a sequential equilibrium where one organization mixes between trust and distrust and the profit-seeking double agent mixes her alignment between the two organizations. When the game includes both profit-seeking and organization-loyal types of agents, semi-separating equilibria are possible, depending on the distribution of agent types and the quality of information about agents’ trustworthiness. Pure-strategy trust by both organizations can be sequentially rational only with the existence of loyal types.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2020.1800896 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:defpea:v:32:y:2021:i:8:p:941-955

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GDPE20

DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2020.1800896

Access Statistics for this article

Defence and Peace Economics is currently edited by Professor Keith Hartley

More articles in Defence and Peace Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().