IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/specre/v8y2006i4p301-315.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The absent-minded prisoner

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Dilger

Abstract

If one of two rational players is absent-minded for at least three rounds, cooperation in a prisoners dilemma with a finite number of repetitions is possible. If both players are absentminded, even two rounds of absent-mindedness can be enough for cooperation in these rounds and all rounds before. Sufficient conditions for the existence of a cooperative equilibrium are derived, a plausible interpretation of absent-mindedness in the case of many repetitions is given.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Dilger, 2006. "The absent-minded prisoner," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 301-315, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:specre:v:8:y:2006:i:4:p:301-315
    DOI: 10.1007/s10108-006-9011-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10108-006-9011-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10108-006-9011-1?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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kreps, David M. & Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John & Wilson, Robert, 1982. "Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 245-252, August.
    2. Piccione, Michele & Rubinstein, Ariel, 1997. "The Absent-Minded Driver's Paradox: Synthesis and Responses," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 121-130, July.
    3. Dulleck, Uwe & Oechssler, Jorg, 1997. "The absent-minded centipede," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 309-315, September.
    4. Lipman, Barton L., 1997. "More Absentmindedness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 97-101, July.
    5. Piccione, Michele & Rubinstein, Ariel, 1997. "On the Interpretation of Decision Problems with Imperfect Recall," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, July.
    6. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    7. Aumann, Robert J. & Hart, Sergiu & Perry, Motty, 1997. "The Absent-Minded Driver," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 102-116, July.
    8. Aumann, Robert J. & Hart, Sergiu & Perry, Motty, 1997. "The Forgetful Passenger," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 117-120, July.
    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. Rassenti, Stephen, 2009. "The strategic motive to sell forward: experimental evidence," UC3M Working papers. Economics we092616, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.

    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. Sudipta Sarangi & Cary Deck, 2006. "Inducing Absent-Mindedness in the Lab," Departmental Working Papers 2006-09, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    2. Hillas, John & Kvasov, Dmitriy, 2020. "Backward induction in games without perfect recall," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 207-218.
    3. Deck, Cary & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2009. "Inducing imperfect recall in the lab," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 64-74, January.
    4. Piccione, Michele & Rubinstein, Ariel, 1997. "The Absent-Minded Driver's Paradox: Synthesis and Responses," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 121-130, July.
    5. Saori Chiba & Kaiwen Leong, 2016. "Behavioral Economics of Crime Rates and Punishment Levels," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(4), pages 727-754, December.
    6. Jehiel, Philippe, 2005. "Analogy-based expectation equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 81-104, August.
    7. Jean Baratgin & Bernard Walliser, 2010. "Sleeping Beauty and the absent-minded driver," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 489-496, September.
    8. Nicola Dimitri, 2005. "Dynamic Consistency in Extensive form Decision Problems," Department of Economics University of Siena 455, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    9. Uwe Dulleck, 2007. "The E-Mail Game Revisited — Modeling Rough Inductive Reasoning," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(02), pages 323-339.
    10. Nicola Dimitri, 2009. "Dynamic consistency in extensive form decision problems," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 66(4), pages 345-354, April.
    11. Daniel Monte, 2014. "Incentive constraints in games with bounded memory," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(1), pages 137-143, February.
    12. Wichardt, Philipp C., 2010. "Modelling equilibrium play as governed by analogy and limited foresight," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 472-487, November.
    13. Yilmaz Kocer, 2010. "Endogenous Learning with Bounded Memory," Working Papers 1290, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Econometric Research Program..
    14. Ro’i Zultan, 2013. "Timing of messages and the Aumann conjecture: a multiple-selves approach," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(4), pages 789-800, November.
    15. Lambert, Nicolas S. & Marple, Adrian & Shoham, Yoav, 2019. "On equilibria in games with imperfect recall," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 164-185.
    16. Stefano Ficco & Vladimir A. Karamychev, 2004. "Information Overload in Multi-Stage Selection Procedures," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 04-077/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Monte, Daniel, 2014. "Learning with bounded memory in games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 204-223.
    18. M. Levati & Matthias Uhl & Ro’i Zultan, 2014. "Imperfect recall and time inconsistencies: an experimental test of the absentminded driver “paradox”," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(1), pages 65-88, February.
    19. Jude Kline, J., 2002. "Minimum Memory for Equivalence between Ex Ante Optimality and Time-Consistency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 278-305, February.
    20. Ambrus, Attila & Pathak, Parag A., 2011. "Cooperation over finite horizons: A theory and experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 500-512.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Absent-mindedness; Prisoners’ dilemma; Repeated games; C72;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    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:spr:specre:v:8:y:2006:i:4:p:301-315. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.