Replication data for: The Evolution of Cooperation: The Role of Costly Strategy Adjustments

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Julian Romero; Yaroslav Rosokha

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
data			10/12/2019 11:03:PM
LICENSE.txt	text/plain	14.6 KB	10/12/2019 07:03:PM

Project Citation:

Romero, Julian, and Rosokha, Yaroslav. Replication data for: The Evolution of Cooperation: The Role of Costly Strategy Adjustments. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2019. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-10-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/E114358V1

Project Description

Summary: 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 but 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.

Scope of Project

JEL Classification:
      C71 Cooperative Games
      C72 Noncooperative Games
      C73 Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games; Repeated Games
      C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual

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Published Versions

V1 [2019-10-12]

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Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

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