The Evolution of Cooperation: The Role of Costly Strategy Adjustments
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Dept Econ, Eller Coll ManagementIssue Date
2019-02
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
AMER ECONOMIC ASSOCCitation
Romero, Julian, and Yaroslav Rosokha. 2019. "The Evolution of Cooperation: The Role of Costly Strategy Adjustments." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 11 (1): 299-328.Rights
Copyright © 2019 American Economic Association. All rights reserved.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
We study the evolution of cooperation in the indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma when it is costly for players to adjust their strategy. Our experimental interface allows subjects to design a comprehensive strategy that then selects actions for them in every period. We conduct lab experiments in which subjects can adjust their strategies during a repeated game but may incur a cost for doing so. We find three main results. First, subjects learn to cooperate more when adjustments are costless than when they are costly. Second, subjects make more adjustments to their strategies when adjustments are costless, but they still make adjustments even when they are costly. Finally, we find that cooperative strategies emerge over time when adjustments are costless hut not when adjustments are costly. These results highlight that within-game experimentation is critical to the rise of cooperative behavior We provide simulations based on an evolutionary algorithm to support these results.ISSN
1556-5068Version
Final published versionAdditional Links
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mic.20160220ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1257/mic.20160220