False Reputation in a Society of Players

Matthew Jackson and Ehud Kalai

Game Theory and Information from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Exploiting small uncertainties on the part of opponents, players in long, finitely repeated games can maintain false reputations that lead to a large variety of equilibrium outcomes. Even cooperation in a finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma is obtainable. Can such false reputations be maintained in a society if the same repeated game is played recurringly by many different groups and each group observes the play paths of the earlier groups? We argue that such false reputations must die out over time. To prove this in environments that allow for rich (uncountable) sets of types of players, we combine ideas of purification with recent results from the rational learning literature.

Keywords: recurring game; learning; social learning; prisoners dilemma; Bayesian equilibrium; folk theorem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 1997-11-25
Note: Type of Document - postscript; prepared on pc-latex; to print on Postscript; pages: 21; figures: one. comments welcome
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Working Paper: False Reputation in a Society of Players (1997)
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