When is Tit-For-Tat unbeatable?

Burkhard Schipper, Peter Duersch and Jörg Oechssler
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Peter Dürsch

No 45, Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics

Abstract: We characterize the class of symmetric two-player games in which tit-for-tat cannot be beaten even by very sophisticated opponents in a repeated game. It turns out to be the class of exact potential games. More generally, there is a class of simple imitation rules that includes tit-for-tat but also imitate-the-best and imitate-if-better. Every decision rule in this class is essentially unbeatable in exact potential games. Our results apply to many interesting games including all symmetric 2x2 games, and standard examples of Cournot duopoly, price competition, public goods games, common pool resource games, and minimum effort coordination games.

Keywords: Imitation; tit-for-tat; decision rules; learning; exact potential games; symmetric games; repeated games; relative payoffs; zero-sum games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 D43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2013-01-21
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: When is tit-for-tat unbeatable? (2014)
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