IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Game Harmony as a Predictor of Cooperation in 2 x 2 Games

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel John Zizzo
  • Jonathan H.W. Tan

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental test of the relationship between game harmony and cooperation in 2 x 2 games. Game harmony measures describe how harmonious (non-conflictual) or disharmonious (conflictual) the interests of players are, as embodied in the payoffs: coordination games and constant-sum games are examples of games of perfect harmony and disharmony, respectively, with most games being somewhere in the middle. In our experiment we consider a variety of 2 x 2 games, including amongst others the Prisoner`s Dilemma, the Stag-Hunt, the Chicken, a coordination game and three variants of trust games. We find that simple game harmony measures can explain 2/3 (or more) or the variance in mean cooperation rate across these games.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel John Zizzo & Jonathan H.W. Tan, 2002. "Game Harmony as a Predictor of Cooperation in 2 x 2 Games," Economics Series Working Papers 117, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2e84540a-1597-4e89-978c-1e5ab90209b1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Smerilli, Alessandra, 2008. "We-thinking and 'double-crossing': frames, reasoning and equilibria," MPRA Paper 11545, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Alessandra Smerilli, 2012. "We-thinking and vacillation between frames: filling a gap in Bacharach’s theory," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 73(4), pages 539-560, October.
    3. Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2008. "Groups, cooperation and conflict in games," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 1-17, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    game harmony; cooperation; 2 x 2 games; trust games; social dilemmas.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:oxf:wpaper:117. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    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.