Cooperation Through Imitation

James Bergin and Dan Bernhardt

No 1042, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: This paper characterizes long-run outcomes for broad classes of symmetric games, when players select actions on the basis of average historical performance. Received wisdom is that when agent's interests are partially opposed, behavior is excessively competitive: ``keeping up with the Jones' '' lowers everyones' welfare. Here, we study the long-run consequences of imitative behavior when agents have sufficiently long memories --- and the outcome is dramatically different. Imitation robustly leads to cooperative outcomes (with highest symmetric payoffs) in the long run. This provides a rationale, for example, for collusive cartel-like behavior without collusive intent on the part of the agents.

Keywords: Evolution; Imitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 D21 D43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gth and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1042.pdf First version 2006 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Cooperation through imitation (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1042

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