The Variability of Conditional Cooperation in Sequential Prisoner's Dilemmas

Simon Gaechter (), Kyeongtae Lee and Martin Sefton ()
Additional contact information
Simon Gaechter: University of Nottingham
Kyeongtae Lee: Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea
Martin Sefton: University of Nottingham
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Gächter

No 2022-10, Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Abstract: We examine how conditional cooperation is related to the material payoffs in a Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma experiment. We have subjects play eight SPDs with varying payoffs, systematically varying the material gain to the second-mover and the material loss to the first-mover when the second-mover defects in response to cooperation. We find that few second-movers are conditionally cooperative in all eight games, and most second-movers change their strategies from game to game. Second-movers are less likely to conditionally cooperate when the gain is higher and when the loss is lower. This pattern is consistent with models of distributional preferences.

Keywords: prisoner's dilemma; conditional cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cedex/documents/paper ... on-paper-2022-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:not:notcdx:2022-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jose V Guinot Saporta ().