We show that for any discount factor, there is a natural number M such that all subgame perfect equilibrium outcomes of the discounted repeated prisoners dilemma can be obtained by subgame perfect equilibrium strategies with the following property: current play depends only on the number of the time-index and on the history of the last M periods. Therefore, players who are restricted to using pure strategies, have to remember, at the most, M periods in order to play any equilibrium outcome of the discounted repeated prisoners dilemma. This result leads us to introduce the notion of time dependent complexity, and to conclude that in the repeated prisoners dilemma, restricting attention to finite time dependent complex strategies is enough.
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 Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Economia in its series FEUNL Working Paper Series with number
wp449.
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.)