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Play it Again: Partner Choice, Reputation Building and Learning in Restarting, Finitely-Repeated Dilemma Games

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that opportunities for two-sided partner choice in finitely repeated social dilemma games can promote cooperation through a combination of sorting and opportunistic signaling, with late period defections by selfish players causing an end-game decline. How such experience would affect play of subsequent finitely-repeated games remains unclear. In each of six treatments that vary the cooperation premium and the informational basis for reputation formation, we let sets of subjects play sequences of finitely-repeated voluntary contribution games to study the competing forces of (a) learning about the benefits of reputation, and (b) learning about backward unraveling. We find, inter alia, that with a high cooperation premium and good information, investment in reputation grows across sets of finitely-repeated games.

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  • Kenju Kamei & Louis Putterman, 2013. "Play it Again: Partner Choice, Reputation Building and Learning in Restarting, Finitely-Repeated Dilemma Games," Working Papers 2013-8, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bro:econwp:2013-8
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    Cited by:

    1. Fehr, Dietmar & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "Gossip and the efficiency of interactions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 448-460.
    2. Kamei, Kenju, 2016. "Information Disclosure and Cooperation in a Finitely-repeated Dilemma: Experimental Evidence," MPRA Paper 75100, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Kenju Kamei, 2019. "Cooperation and endogenous repetition in an infinitely repeated social dilemma," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(3), pages 797-834, September.
    4. Kenju Kamei, 2019. "The power of joint decision-making in a finitely-repeated dilemma," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 71(3), pages 600-622.
    5. Matthew Embrey & Guillaume R Fréchette & Sevgi Yuksel, 2018. "Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(1), pages 509-551.

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    Keywords

    cooperation; reputation; voluntary contribution; public goods; sorting; endogenous grouping; group formation; experiment;
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