Coevolution of deception and preferences: Darwin and Nash meet Machiavelli

Yuval Heller and Erik Mohlin ()

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We develop a framework in which individuals' preferences coevolve with their abilities to deceive others about their preferences and intentions. Specifically, individuals are characterised by (i) a level of cognitive sophistication and (ii) a subjective utility function. Increased cognition is costly, but higher-level individuals have the advantage of being able to deceive lower-level opponents about their preferences and intentions in some of the matches. In the remaining matches, the individuals observe each other's preferences. Our main result shows that, essentially, only efficient outcomes can be stable. Moreover, under additional mild assumptions, we show that an efficient outcome is stable if and only if the gain from unilateral deviation is smaller than the effective cost of deception in the environment.

Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-upt
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Published in Games and Economic Behavior, Volume 113, January 2019, Pages 223-247

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Related works:
Journal Article: Coevolution of deception and preferences: Darwin and Nash meet Machiavelli (2019)
Working Paper: Coevolution of Deception and Preferences: Darwin and Nash Meet Machiavelli (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2006.15308

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