This paper develops a Trade Network Game (TNG) that combines evolutionary game play with endogenous partner selection. Resource- constrained buyers and sellers choose and refuse trade partners on the basis of continually updated expected payoffs. Partner selection takes place in accordance with a "deferred choice and refusal" mechanism that is shown to have interesting stability, optimality, and uniqueness properties. The iterated prisoner's dilemma strategies used by buyers and sellers to conduct their trades are evolved over time via a genetic algorithm that biases reproduction in favor of strategies that have been successful in past trades. The TNG is shown to encompass a variety of economic applications, such as job search games, labor markets modelled as assignment games, labor markets with endogenously determined workers and employers, and double auction games. To illustrate the way in which preferential partner selection interacts with game play in the TNG, resulting in the endogenous formation of trade networks, a 5-trader TNG is analyzed in detail.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Iowa State University Department of Economics in its series Economic Report with number
36.
Length: Date of creation: May 1995 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:isu:iowaer:36
Contact details of provider: Postal: Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070 Phone: +1 515.294.6741 Fax: +1 515.294.0221 Email: Web page: http://www.econ.iastate.edu More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Stephanie Bridges).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.