Starting Small and Commitment

Joel Watson

No 1217, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: I study a model of a long-term partnership with two-sided incomplete information. The partners jointly determine the stakes of their relationship and individually decide whether to cooperate with or betray each other over time. I characterize the extremal -- interim incentive efficient equilibria. In these equilibria, the partners generally "start small," with the level of interaction growing over time. The types of players separate quickly. Further, cooperation between "good" types is viable regardless of how pessimistic the players are about each other initially. The quick nature of separation in an extremal equilibrium contrasts with the outcome selected by a strong renegotiation criterion (as studied in Watson [11]).

JEL-codes: C72 C73 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 1999-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d12/d1217.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: Starting Small and Commitment (2002)
Working Paper: Starting Small and Commitment (1999)
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:cwl:cwldpp:1217

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd ().