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Switching Costs In Infinitely Repeated Games

Author

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  • Barton L. Lipman

    (Boston University)

  • Ruqu Wang

Abstract

We show that small switching costs can have surprisingly dramatic effects in infinitely repeated games if these costs are large relative to payoffs in a single period. This shows that the results in Lipman and Wang [2000] do have analogs in the case of infinitely repeated games. We also discuss whether the results here or those in Lipman–Wang [2000] imply a discontinuity in the equilibrium outcome correspondence with respect to small switching costs. We conclude that there is not a discontinuity with respect to switching costs but that the switching costs do create a discontinuity with respect to the length of a period.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Barton L. Lipman & Ruqu Wang, 2006. "Switching Costs In Infinitely Repeated Games," Working Paper 1032, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1032
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    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1032.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lipman, Barton L. & Wang, Ruqu, 2000. "Switching Costs in Frequently Repeated Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 149-190, August.
    2. Drew Fudenberg & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem In Repeated Games With Discounting Or With Incomplete Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 11, pages 209-230, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Dutta Prajit K., 1995. "Collusion, Discounting and Dynamic Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 289-306, June.
    4. Abreu, Dilip & Dutta, Prajit K & Smith, Lones, 1994. "The Folk Theorem for Repeated Games: A NEU Condition," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 939-948, July.
    5. Lipman, Barton L. & Wang, Ruqu, 2009. "Switching costs in infinitely repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 292-314, May.
    6. Dutta Prajit K., 1995. "A Folk Theorem for Stochastic Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 1-32, June.
    7. Drew Fudenberg & David Levine, 2008. "Subgame–Perfect Equilibria of Finite– and Infinite–Horizon Games," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 1, pages 3-20, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Fudenberg, Drew & Maskin, Eric, 1991. "On the dispensability of public randomization in discounted repeated games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 428-438, April.
    9. Chakrabarti, Subir K., 1990. "Characterizations of the equilibrium payoffs of inertia supergames," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 171-183, June.
    10. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    11. Wen, Quan, 1994. "The "Folk Theorem" for Repeated Games with Complete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 949-954, July.
    12. Barton L. Lipman & Ruqu Wang, 2006. "Switching Costs in Infinitely Repeated Games1," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2006-003, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    13. Benoit, Jean-Pierre & Krishna, Vijay, 1985. "Finitely Repeated Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(4), pages 905-922, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Lipman, Barton L. & Wang, Ruqu, 2009. "Switching costs in infinitely repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 292-314, May.
    2. Guney, Begum & Richter, Michael, 2018. "Costly switching from a status quo," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 55-70.
    3. Francesc Dilmé & Daniel F Garrett, 2019. "Residual Deterrence," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(5), pages 1654-1686.
    4. Yevgeny Tsodikovich & Xavier Venel & Anna Zseleva, 2021. "Repeated Games with Switching Costs: Stationary vs History-Independent Strategies," AMSE Working Papers 2129, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    5. Lehrer, Ehud & Solan, Eilon, 2018. "High frequency repeated games with costly monitoring," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    6. Yevgeny Tsodikovich & Xavier Venel & Anna Zseleva, 2021. "Repeated Games with Switching Costs: Stationary vs History-Independent Strategies," Working Papers halshs-03223279, HAL.
    7. Aramendia, Miguel & Wen, Quan, 2020. "Myopic perception in repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 1-14.
    8. Yevgeny Tsodikovich & Xavier Venel & Anna Zseleva, 2021. "Repeated Games with Switching Costs: Stationary vs History Independent Strategies," Papers 2103.00045, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2021.
    9. Yevgeny Tsodikovich & Ehud Lehrer, 2019. "Stochastic revision opportunities in Markov decision problems," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 279(1), pages 251-270, August.
    10. Luca Lambertini & Raimondello Orsini, 2013. "On Hotelling's ‘stability in competition’ with network externalities and switching costs," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(4), pages 873-883, November.
    11. Kurokawa, Shun, 2019. "How memory cost, switching cost, and payoff non-linearity affect the evolution of persistence," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 341(C), pages 174-192.
    12. Yevgeny Tsodikovich & Xavier Venel & Anna Zseleva, 2022. "Folk Theorems in Repeated Games with Switching Costs," Working Papers hal-03888188, HAL.
    13. Dilmé, Francesc, 2019. "Reputation building through costly adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 586-626.
    14. Yu, Fengyuan & Wang, Jianwei & Chen, Wei & He, Jialu, 2023. "Increased cooperation potential and risk under suppressed strategy differentiation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 621(C).
    15. Dai Zusai, 2018. "Tempered best response dynamics," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 47(1), pages 1-34, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    infinite horizon; repeated games; switching costs; Folk Theorem;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

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