Imitation dynamics in the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma: An exploratory example

This paper investigates a deterministic evolutionary process governing the adoption of strategies for playing the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma. Agents playing unsuccessful strategies attempt to imitate the strategies of successful agents. Because agents' strategies are unobservable, they must be inferred from a memory of pairwise play and a knowledge of the strategy space. As a result, winning strategies can be confused with other, inferior strategies, and this imperfect imitation can enhance the growth (or slow the decline) of under-performing strategies. In contrast to results obtained under payoff-monotonic dynamics such as the replicator dynamic or an analysis of Neutrally Stable Strategies, cooperation is eliminated in the long run; agents' inability to observe the strategies of successful players can fundamentally change the evolutionary dynamics.

Title	Imitation dynamics in the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma: An exploratory example
Creator	Ruebeck, Christopher S.
Publisher	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Academic Department	Economics
Division	Social Sciences
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	1999
Date Available	2010-11-30T19:42:57Z
Type	Article
Language	English
Keyword	limit of means
	repeated game
	replicator dynamic
	observable strategy
Bibliographic Citation	Ruebeck, C. S. 1999. "Imitation dynamics in the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma: An exploratory example." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 40 (1): 81-104
Standard Identifier	DOI 10.1016/S0167-2681(99)00043-8
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/762
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/762
Rights Statement	In Copyright
Rights Holders	Elsevier Science B.V.