IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/1554.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can a Grain of Patience Trigger Cooperation? The Role of an Outside Option

Author

Listed:
  • Moav, Omer

    (University of Warwick & Reichman University)

  • Pascali, Luigi

    (UPF & LUISS)

  • Pauzner, Ady

    (Tel Aviv University & Reichman University)

Abstract

Cooperation in joint ventures is widespread, despite its vulnerability to defection. It can emerge when the interaction is repeated and agents are patient enough to prefer the benefits of future cooperation over the short-term gains from defection. Thus, if a large fraction of the population consists of impatient exploiters who always defect and agents are randomly paired to play a repeated prisoner dilemma game, patient agents defect as well, and society is in a no-cooperation trap. We show that the existence of an outside option can break this trap even if the fraction of patient agents is arbitrarily small. Impatient agents self-select out of the game, allowing patient agents to cooperate. Patience thus has an evolutionary advantage, leading to widespread cooperation.

Suggested Citation

  • Moav, Omer & Pascali, Luigi & Pauzner, Ady, 2025. "Can a Grain of Patience Trigger Cooperation? The Role of an Outside Option," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1554, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:1554
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2025/twerp_1554-_moav.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James W. Friedman, 1971. "A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    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. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    4. Guido Tabellini, 2008. "The Scope of Cooperation: Values and Incentives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 905-950.
    5. James W. Friedman, 1973. "A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames: A Correction," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 40(3), pages 435-435.
    6. Kranton, Rachel E, 1996. "The Formation of Cooperative Relationships," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 214-233, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bart S. Vanneste & Douglas H. Frank, 2014. "Forgiveness in Vertical Relationships: Incentive and Termination Effects," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(6), pages 1807-1822, December.
    2. Vincenzo Scoppa, 2003. "Contratti incompleti ed enforcement endogeno. Una rassegna della letteratura," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 391-440.
    3. Takashi Kamihigashi & Taiji Furusawa, 2007. "Global Dynamics in Infinitely Repeated Games with Additively Separable Continuous Payoffs," Discussion Paper Series 210, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    4. Takako Fujiwara-Greve & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Nobue Suzuki, 2015. "Efficiency may improve when defectors exist," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 60(3), pages 423-460, November.
    5. Nicole Immorlica & Brendan Lucier & Brian W. Rogers, 2010. "Emergence of Cooperation in ANonymous Social Networks through Social Capital," 2010 Meeting Papers 1134, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    7. Chari, V V & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1990. "Sustainable Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 783-802, August.
    8. Flochel, Laurent & Versaevel, Bruno & de Villemeur, Étienne, 2009. "Optimal Collusion with Limited Liability and Policy Implications," TSE Working Papers 09-027, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Jul 2011.
    9. Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2005. "Managerial incentives and collusive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1501-1523, August.
    10. Wilson, Alistair J. & Wu, Hong, 2017. "At-will relationships: How an option to walk away affects cooperation and efficiency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 487-507.
    11. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Calzolari, Giacomo & Casari, Marco, 2017. "Climate change: Behavioral responses from extreme events and delayed damages," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 103-115.
    12. Frank Stähler, 1996. "On International compensations for environmental stocks," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 8(1), pages 1-13, July.
    13. Pablo Hernandez-Lagos & Dylan Minor & Dana Sisak, 2017. "Do people who care about others cooperate more? Experimental evidence from relative incentive pay," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(4), pages 809-835, December.
    14. Alexis Louaas, 2021. "Morality and Equality from Rationality Alone - A repeated game approach of contractarianism," Working Papers hal-02948051, HAL.
    15. Baldelli, Serena & Lambertini, Luca, 2006. "Price vs quantity in a duopoly supergame with Nash punishments," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 121-130, September.
    16. L. Lambertini, 2006. "Is America Unrivaled? A Repeated Game Analysis," Working Papers 563, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    17. Drew Fudenberg & David G. Rand & Anna Dreber, 2012. "Slow to Anger and Fast to Forgive: Cooperation in an Uncertain World," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 720-749, April.
    18. van Damme, Eric, 1989. "Renegotiation-proof equilibria in repeated prisoners' dilemma," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 206-217, February.
    19. Ezzat Elokda & Saverio Bolognani & Andrea Censi & Florian Dörfler & Emilio Frazzoli, 2024. "A Self-Contained Karma Economy for the Dynamic Allocation of Common Resources," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 578-610, July.
    20. Miller, John H., 1996. "The coevolution of automata in the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 87-112, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wrk:warwec:1554. 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: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.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.