IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2106.15994.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Behavioral Mistakes Support Cooperation in an N-Person Repeated Public Goods Game

Author

Listed:
  • Jung-Kyoo Choi
  • Jun Sok Huhh

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of behavioral mistakes on the evolutionary stability of the cooperative equilibrium in a repeated public goods game. Many studies show that behavioral mistakes have detrimental effects on cooperation because they reduce the expected length of mutual cooperation by triggering the conditional retaliation of the cooperators. However, this study shows that behavioral mistakes could have positive effects. Conditional cooperative strategies are either neutrally stable or are unstable in a mistake-free environment, but we show that behavioral mistakes can make \textit{all} of the conditional cooperative strategies evolutionarily stable. We show that behavioral mistakes stabilize the cooperative equilibrium based on the most intolerant cooperative strategy by eliminating the behavioral indistinguishability between conditional cooperators in the cooperative equilibrium. We also show that mistakes make the tolerant conditional cooperative strategies evolutionarily stable by preventing the defectors from accumulating the free-rider's advantages. Lastly, we show that the behavioral mistakes could serve as a criterion for the equilibrium selection among cooperative equilibria.

Suggested Citation

  • Jung-Kyoo Choi & Jun Sok Huhh, 2021. "Behavioral Mistakes Support Cooperation in an N-Person Repeated Public Goods Game," Papers 2106.15994, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2106.15994
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.15994
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peyton Young, H. & Foster, Dean, 1991. "Cooperation in the long-run," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 145-156, February.
    2. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E., 2003. "Understanding reciprocity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-27, January.
    3. Larry Samuelson, 2002. "Evolution and Game Theory," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 47-66, Spring.
    4. Fudenberg, Drew & Maskin, Eric, 1990. "Evolution and Cooperation in Noisy Repeated Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 274-279, May.
    5. Jorgen W. Weibull, 1997. "Evolutionary Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262731215, December.
    6. Drew Fudenberg & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem In Repeated Games With Discounting Or With Incomplete Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 11, pages 209-230, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. repec:hhs:iuiwop:487 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Binmore, Kenneth G. & Samuelson, Larry, 1992. "Evolutionary stability in repeated games played by finite automata," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 278-305, August.
    9. Herbert Gintis, 2006. "Behavioral ethics meets natural justice," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 5(1), pages 5-32, February.
    10. Bendor, Jonathan & Mookherjee, Dilip, 1987. "Institutional Structure and the Logic of Ongoing Collective Action," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 129-154, March.
    11. Choi, Jung-Kyoo, 2007. "Trembles may support cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 384-393, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Choi, Jung-Kyoo, 2007. "Trembles may support cooperation in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 384-393, July.
    2. García, Julián & van Veelen, Matthijs, 2016. "In and out of equilibrium I: Evolution of strategies in repeated games with discounting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 161-189.
    3. Kolstad, Ivar, 2007. "The evolution of social norms: With managerial implications," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 58-72, February.
    4. Zhang, Huanren, 2018. "Errors can increase cooperation in finite populations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 203-219.
    5. Drew Fudenberg & David G. Rand & Anna Dreber, 2012. "Slow to Anger and Fast to Forgive: Cooperation in an Uncertain World," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 720-749, April.
    6. Anderlini, Luca & Sabourian, Hamid, 2001. "Cooperation and computability in n-player games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 99-137, September.
    7. Daniel Friedman & Nirvikar Singh, 2004. "Vengefulness Evolves in Small Groups," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Steffen Huck (ed.), Advances in Understanding Strategic Behaviour, chapter 3, pages 28-54, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Conlon, John R., 2003. "Hope springs eternal: learning and the stability of cooperation in short horizon repeated games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 35-65, September.
    9. Ueda, Masahiko, 2023. "Memory-two strategies forming symmetric mutual reinforcement learning equilibrium in repeated prisoners’ dilemma game," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 444(C).
    10. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E., 2003. "Understanding reciprocity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-27, January.
    11. Matthijs van Veelen & Benjamin Allen & Moshe Hoffman & Burton Simon & Carl Veller, 2016. "Inclusive Fitness," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-055/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Piotr Swistak, 1992. "What Games? Why Equilibria? Which Equilibria?," Rationality and Society, , vol. 4(1), pages 103-116, January.
    13. Demichelis, Stefano & Weibull, Jörgen, 2006. "Efficiency, communication and honesty," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 645, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 28 Nov 2006.
    14. Benjamin M Zagorsky & Johannes G Reiter & Krishnendu Chatterjee & Martin A Nowak, 2013. "Forgiver Triumphs in Alternating Prisoner's Dilemma," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-8, December.
    15. Weibull, Jörgen W., 1992. "An Introduction to Evolutionary Game Theory," Working Paper Series 347, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    16. Matthijs van Veelen, 2007. "Evolution of Strategies in Repeated Games with Discounting," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 06-115/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Amann, Erwin & Yang, Chun-Lei, 1998. "Sophistication and the persistence of cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 91-105, September.
    18. Levine, David K. & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 2007. "The evolution of cooperation through imitation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 293-315, February.
    19. Weibull, Jörgen W., 1997. "What have we learned from Evolutionary Game Theory so far?," Working Paper Series 487, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 26 Oct 1998.
    20. Chong Lim Kim & Yong-Gwan Kim, 1993. "The Evolution of Obedience Norms in the Repeated Carrot-and-the Stick Game," Game Theory and Information 9311001, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2106.15994. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.