Instability of defection in the prisoner's dilemma under best experienced payoff dynamics

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Arigapudi, Srinivas; Heller, Yuval; Milchtaich, Igal
• 署名单位: Technion Israel Institute of Technology; Bar Ilan University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2020.105174
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Learning; COOPERATION; Best experienced payoff dynamics; Sampling equilibrium; evolutionary stability

摘要

We study population dynamics under which each revising agent tests each action k times, with each trial being against a newly drawn opponent, and chooses the action whose mean payoff was highest during the testing phase. When k = 1, defection is globally stable in the prisoner's dilemma. By contrast, when k > 1 we show that, if the gains from defection are not too large, there exists a globally stable state in which agents cooperate with probability between 28% and 50%. Next, we characterize stability of strict equilibria in general games. Our results demonstrate that the empirically plausible case of k > 1 can yield qualitatively different predictions than the case k =1 commonly studied in the literature. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.