American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Strategy Choice in the Infinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma
American Economic Review
vol. 109,
no. 11, November 2019
(pp. 3929–52)
Abstract
We use a novel experimental design to reliably elicit subjects' strategies in an infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma experiment with perfect monitoring. We find that three simple strategies represent the majority of the chosen strategies: Always Defect, Tit-for-Tat, and Grim. In addition, we identify how the strategies systematically vary with the parameters of the game. Finally, we use the elicited strategies to test the ability to recover strategies using statistical methods based on observed round-by-round cooperation choices and find that this can be done fairly well, but only under certain conditions.Citation
Dal Bó, Pedro, and Guillaume R. Fréchette. 2019. "Strategy Choice in the Infinitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma." American Economic Review, 109 (11): 3929–52. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20181480Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C72 Noncooperative Games
- C73 Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games; Repeated Games
- C92 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior