IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v21y2019i5p812-825.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Building rational cooperation on their own: Learning to start small

Author

Listed:
  • James Andreoni
  • Michael A. Kuhn
  • Larry Samuelson

Abstract

We report experimental results for a twice‐played prisoners' dilemma in which the players can choose the allocation of the stakes across the two periods. Our point of departure is the assumption that some (but not all) people are willing to cooperate, as long as their opponent is sufficiently likely to do so. The presence of such types can be exploited to enhance cooperation by structuring the twice‐played prisoners' dilemma to “start small,” so that the second‐stage stakes are larger (but not too much larger) than the first‐stage stakes. We compare conditions where the allocation of stakes is chosen exogenously to conditions where it is chosen by the players themselves. We show that players gravitate toward the payoff‐maximizing strategy of starting small in a twice‐played prisoners' dilemma. Intriguingly, the salutary payoff effects of doing so are larger than those that arise when the same allocation is exogenously chosen.

Suggested Citation

  • James Andreoni & Michael A. Kuhn & Larry Samuelson, 2019. "Building rational cooperation on their own: Learning to start small," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(5), pages 812-825, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:21:y:2019:i:5:p:812-825
    DOI: 10.1111/jpet.12322
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12322
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jpet.12322?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hua, Xiameng & Watson, Joel, 2022. "Starting small in project choice: A discrete-time setting with a continuum of types," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:21:y:2019:i:5:p:812-825. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.