IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpga/0405006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Time Dependent Bounded Recall Strategies Are Enough to Play the Discounted Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Mehmet Barlo

    (Sabanc{\i} University)

  • Guilherme Carmona

    (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehmet Barlo & Guilherme Carmona, 2004. "Time Dependent Bounded Recall Strategies Are Enough to Play the Discounted Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma," Game Theory and Information 0405006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpga:0405006
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 11. None
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/game/papers/0405/0405006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Neyman, Abraham, 1985. "Bounded complexity justifies cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 227-229.
    2. Kalai, Ehud & Stanford, William, 1988. "Finite Rationality and Interpersonal Complexity in Repeated Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 397-410, March.
    3. Cole, Harold L. & Kocherlakota, Narayana R., 2005. "Finite memory and imperfect monitoring," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 59-72, October.
    4. Barlo, Mehmet & Carmona, Guilherme & Sabourian, Hamid, 2009. "Repeated games with one-memory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 312-336, January.
    5. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1986. "Finite automata play the repeated prisoner's dilemma," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 83-96, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mehmet Barlo & Guilherme Carmona, 2007. "One - memory in repeated games," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp500, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.
    2. Mailath, George J. & Olszewski, Wojciech, 2011. "Folk theorems with bounded recall under (almost) perfect monitoring," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 174-192, January.

    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. Monte, Daniel, 2013. "Bounded memory and permanent reputations," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 345-354.
    2. 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).
    3. Daniel Monte & Maher Said, 2014. "The value of (bounded) memory in a changing world," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(1), pages 59-82, May.
    4. Renault, Jérôme & Scarsini, Marco & Tomala, Tristan, 2008. "Playing off-line games with bounded rationality," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 207-223, September.
    5. David Baron & Ehud Kalai, 1990. "Dividing a Cake by Majority: The Simplest Equilibria," Discussion Papers 919, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    6. Gilboa Itzhak & Schmeidler David, 1994. "Infinite Histories and Steady Orbits in Repeated Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 370-399, May.
    7. Jehiel, Philippe, 1998. "Learning to Play Limited Forecast Equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 274-298, February.
    8. Ho, Teck-Hua, 1996. "Finite automata play repeated prisoner's dilemma with information processing costs," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-3), pages 173-207.
    9. Beal, Sylvain & Querou, Nicolas, 2007. "Bounded rationality and repeated network formation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 71-89, July.
    10. Horaguchi, Haruo, 1996. "The role of information processing cost as the foundation of bounded rationality in game theory," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 287-294, June.
    11. Compte, Olivier & Postlewaite, Andrew, 2015. "Plausible cooperation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 45-59.
    12. Hubie Chen, 2013. "Bounded rationality, strategy simplification, and equilibrium," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 593-611, August.
    13. George J. Mailath & : Wojciech Olszewski, 2008. "Folk Theorems with Bounded Recall under (Almost) Perfect Monitoring, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 08-027, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 28 Jul 2008.
    14. Yuval Salant & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2021. "Complexity and Choice," CESifo Working Paper Series 9239, CESifo.
    15. Spiegler, Ran, 2005. "Testing threats in repeated games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 214-235, April.
    16. Hernández, Penélope & Urbano, Amparo, 2008. "Codification schemes and finite automata," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 395-409, November.
    17. Kuzmics, Christoph & Palfrey, Thomas & Rogers, Brian W., 2014. "Symmetric play in repeated allocation games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 25-67.
    18. Mailath, George J. & Olszewski, Wojciech, 2011. "Folk theorems with bounded recall under (almost) perfect monitoring," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 174-192, January.
    19. Kalai, E & Neme, A, 1992. "The Strength of a Little Perfection," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 20(4), pages 335-355.
    20. Ehud Kalai, 1995. "Games," Discussion Papers 1141, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma; Memory; Bounded Rationality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    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:wpa:wuwpga:0405006. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.