Prisoner's Dilemma

Piotr Swistak

Chapter 87 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice, 2025, pp 629-632 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game is the most conspicuous insight to emerge from game theory. The game's origins can be traced to John Nash's doctoral thesis, a study by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher, and Albert Tucker's story that led to the game's name. The trademark property of PD is its deficient equilibrium, where players get smaller payoffs than the payoffs they can get otherwise. This equilibrium obtains under minimal assumptions and remains robust across different conditions we can impose on the game. The very existence of PD proves the limits of the invisible hand and the necessity of the state to deal with market failures.

Keywords: Prisoner’s Dilemma’; PD’ one-shot PD’; Sequential PD’ history of PD’; Importance of PD in social science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781802207743
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