The Coordination Value of Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence

A new behavioral foundation is uncovered for why money promotes impersonal exchange. In an experiment, subjects could cooperate by intertemporally exchanging goods with anonymous opponents met at random. Indefinite repetition supported multiple equilibria, from full defection to the efficient outcome. Introducing the possibility to hold and exchange intrinsically worthless tickets affected outcomes and cooperation patterns. Tickets resembled fiat money, which emerged as a tool for equilibrium selection in the economy. Monetary exchange facilitated coordination on cooperation and redistributed surplus from defectors to cooperators. Treatments where subjects could develop a reputation revealed a limited record-keeping role for monetary exchange.money, cooperation, information, trust, folk theorem, repeated games

Testing threats in repeated games

Under most game-theoretic solution concepts, equilibrium beliefs are justified by off-equilibrium events. I propose an equilibrium concept for infinitely repeated games, called "Nash Equilibrium with Tests" (NEWT), according to which players can only justify their equilibrium beliefs with events that take place on the equilibrium path itself. In NEWT, players test every threat that rationalizes a future non-myopic action that they take. The tests are an integral part of equilibrium behavior. Characterization of equilibrium outcomes departs from the classical "folk theorems". The concept provides new insights into the impact of self-enforcement norms, such as reciprocity, on long-run cooperation. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The origins of fair play

This paper gives a brief overview of an evolutionary theory of fairness. The ideas are fleshed out in Binmore's book 'Natural Justice' (Oxford University Press, New York, 2005.), which is itself a condensed version of his earlier two-volume book 'Game Theory and the Social Contract' (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994 and 1998)

"Repeated Games, Entry in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition"

This entry shows why self-interested agents manage to cooperate in a long-term relationship. When agents interact only once, they often have an incentive to deviate from cooperation. In a repeated interaction, however, any mutually beneficial outcome can be sustained in an equilibrium. This fact, known as the folk theorem, is explained under various information structures. This entry also compares repeated games with other means to achieve efficiency and briefly discuss the scope for potential applications.

Does game theory work? The bargaining challenge

Book description: This volume brings together all of Ken Binmore's influential experimental papers on bargaining along with newly written commentary in which Binmore discusses the underlying game theory and addresses the criticism leveled at it by behavioral economists. When Binmore began his experimental work in the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that game theory would not work in the laboratory, but Binmore and other pioneers established that game theory can often predict the behavior of experienced players very well in favorable laboratory settings. The case of human bargaining behavior is particularly challenging for game theory. Everyone agrees that human behavior in real-life bargaining situations is governed at least partly by considerations of fairness, but what happens in a laboratory when such fairness considerations supposedly conflict with game-theoretic predictions? Behavioral economists, who emphasize the importance of other-regarding or social preferences, sometimes argue that their findings threaten traditional game theory. Binmore disputes both their interpretations of their findings and their claims about what game theorists think it reasonable to predict. Binmore's findings from two decades of game theory experiments have made a lasting contribution to economics. These papers—some coauthored with other leading economists, including Larry Samuelson, Avner Shaked, and John Sutton—show that game theory does indeed work in favorable laboratory environments, even in the challenging case of bargaining

Robert Aumann's and Thomas Schelling's Contributions to Game Theory: Analyses of Conflict and Cooperation

Advanced information on the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2005.Game Theory;