Uniqueness in infinitely repeated decision problems

Nicolas Vieille () and Jörgen Weibull

No 755, HEC Research Papers Series from HEC Paris

Abstract: Dynamic decision-making without commitment is usually modelled as a game between the current and future selves of the decision maker. It has been observed that if the time-horizon is infinite, then such games may have multiple subgame-perfect equilibrium solutions. We provide a sufficient condition for uniqueness in a class of such games, namely infinitely repeated decision problems with discounting. The condition is two-fold: the range of possible utility levels in the decision problem should be bounded from below, and the discount function should exhibit weakly increasing patience, that is, the ratio between the discount factors attached to periods t + 1 and t should be non-decreasing in t, a condition met by exponential, quasi-exponential and hyperbolic discounting.

Keywords: game theory; time preference; hyperbolic discounting; repeated decision problems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 C72 C73 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2002-04-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Uniqueness in infinitely repeated decision problems (2002)
Working Paper: Uniqueness in Infinitely Repeated Decision Problems (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:heccah:0755

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