A Few Bad Apples Spoil the Barrel: An Anti-Folk Theorem for Anonymous Repeated Games with Incomplete Information

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sugaya, Takuo; Wolitzky, Alexander
• 署名单位: Stanford University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20200068
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 3817-3835
• 关键词: PLAYERS; COMMUNICATION; COOPERATION

摘要

We study anonymous repeated games where players may be commitment types who always take the same action. We establish a stark anti-folk theorem: if the distribution of the number of commitment types satisfies a smoothness condition and the game has a pairwise dominant action, this action is almost always taken. This implies that cooperation is impossible in the repeated prisoner's dilemma with anonymous random matching. We also bound equilibrium pay-offs for general games. Our bound implies that industry profits converge to zero in linear-demand Cournot oligopoly as the number of firms increases.