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When Do We Learn to Cooperate? The Role of Social Learning in Social Dilemmas

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  • Best, James A

Abstract

In this paper, I look at the interaction between social learning and cooperative behavior. I model this using a social dilemma game with publicly observed sequential actions and asymmetric information about pay offs. I find that some informed agents in this model act, individually and without collusion, to conceal the privately optimal action. Because the privately optimal action is socially costly the behavior of informed agents can lead to a Pareto improvement in a social dilemma. In my model I show that it is possible to get cooperative behavior if information is restricted to a small but non-zero proportion of the population. Moreover, such cooperative behavior occurs in a finite setting where it is public knowledge which agent will act last. The proportion of cooperative agents within the population can be made arbitrarily close to 1 by increasing the finite number of agents playing the game. Finally, I show that under a broad set of conditions that it is a Pareto improvement on a corner value, in the ex-ante welfare sense, for an interior proportion of the population to be informed.

Suggested Citation

  • Best, James A, 2011. "When Do We Learn to Cooperate? The Role of Social Learning in Social Dilemmas," SIRE Discussion Papers 2011-44, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    • Handle: RePEc:edn:sirdps:289
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10943/289
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    1. Hermalin, Benjamin E, 1998. "Toward an Economic Theory of Leadership: Leading by Example," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1188-1206, December.
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