IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v32y2021i8p941-955.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trusting a Double Agent

Author

Listed:
  • William C. Grant

Abstract

We analyze trust in a game with a double agent and two adversarial intelligence organizations. Greater trust by one organization makes the agent more inclined to align against that organization because the intelligence advantage sought by the agent must come at the expense of a trustor. Conversely, trusting less than the rival organization makes the agent more tempted to double-cross the rival. We identify conditions for a sequential equilibrium where one organization mixes between trust and distrust and the profit-seeking double agent mixes her alignment between the two organizations. When the game includes both profit-seeking and organization-loyal types of agents, semi-separating equilibria are possible, depending on the distribution of agent types and the quality of information about agents’ trustworthiness. Pure-strategy trust by both organizations can be sequentially rational only with the existence of loyal types.

Suggested Citation

  • William C. Grant, 2021. "Trusting a Double Agent," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(8), pages 941-955, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:32:y:2021:i:8:p:941-955
    DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2020.1800896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2020.1800896
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242694.2020.1800896?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:taf:defpea:v:32:y:2021:i:8:p:941-955. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    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.