It's Payback time: new insights on cooperation in the repeated prisoners' dilemma

Maria Bigoni, Marco Casari, Andrea Salvanti, Andrzej Skrzypacz and Giancarlo Spagnolo

No 16912, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: In an experiment on the repeated prisoner’s dilemma where intended actions are implemented with noise, Fudenberg et al. (2012) observe that non-equilibrium strategies of the “tit-for-tat†family are largely adopted. Furthermore, they do not find support for risk dominance of TFT as a determinant of cooperation. This comment introduces the “Payback†strategy, which is similar to TFT but is sustainable in equilibrium. Using the data from the original article, we show that Payback captures most of the empirical support previously attributed to TFT, and that the risk dominance criterion based on Payback can explain the observed cooperation patterns.

Keywords: Asymmetric strategies; Imperfect monitoring; Indefinitely repeated games; Risk dominance; Strategic risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 C91 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01
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Working Paper: It’s Payback Time: New Insights on Cooperation in the Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma (2022)
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