Failure of gradualism under imperfect monitoring

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gueron, Yves
• 署名单位: Sogang University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2015.01.006
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 128-145
• 关键词: Monotone games; Voluntary contributions; gradualism; irreversibility; imperfect monitoring; Cooperation breakdown

摘要

We consider a two-player Prisoner's Dilemma type game with continuous actions, where players choose how much to contribute to a public project. This game is played infinitely many times and actions are irreversible: players cannot decrease their actions over time. While it is strictly dominant for players not to contribute in the stage game, some strictly positive level of contribution is Pareto optimal. It is known that when players perfectly observe each other's actions, cooperation can be achieved through gradual increases in contribution levels. I show that introducing an arbitrarily small amount of smooth noise in the monitoring makes cooperation impossible and players play the static Nash equilibrium of the stage-game forever. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.