Cooperation and Endogenous Repetition in an Infinitely Repeated Social Dilemma

Kamei, Kenju

Cooperation and Endogenous Repetition in an Infinitely Repeated Social Dilemma

Kamei, Kenju

Authors

Kenju Kamei

Abstract

A large body of theoretical and experimental literature suggests that exogenously imposed infinite repetition can mitigate people’s opportunistic behavior in dilemma situations through personal enforcement. But, do people collectively choose to interact with the same persons, when there is an alternative with random matching? In a framework of an indefinitely-repeated collective action dilemma game, we let subjects collectively choose whether to (i) play with specific others for all rounds or to (ii) play with randomly matched counterparts in every period. The experiment showed that most subjects collectively select the partner matching option. It also indicated that groups achieve a higher level of cooperation when subjects collectively select option (i) by voting, compared with when the same option is exogenously imposed. These findings have an implication that people’s equilibrium selection may be affected by how the basic rules of games are introduced (endogenously or exogenously) to them.

Citation

Kamei, K. (2017). Cooperation and Endogenous Repetition in an Infinitely Repeated Social Dilemma

Publication Date	Jan 1, 2017
Deposit Date	May 31, 2019
Publicly Available Date	May 31, 2019
Series Title	Durham University Business School working papers series
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1167968
Publisher URL	https://www.dur.ac.uk/business/research/economics/working-papers/