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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Cooperation In Indefinitely Repeated Helping Games: Existence And Characterization, Gabriele Camera, Alessandro Gioffré Nov 2019

Cooperation In Indefinitely Repeated Helping Games: Existence And Characterization, Gabriele Camera, Alessandro Gioffré

ESI Working Papers

Experiments that investigate the spontaneous emergence of money in laboratory societies rely on indefinitely repeated helping games with random matching (Camera et al., 2013; Camera and Casari, 2014). An important open issue is the lack of a general proof of existence of an equilibrium capable of supporting the efficient allocation under private monitoring, without money. Here, we fill this gap by offering a general proof, as well as by characterizing the efficient non-monetary equilibrium. This technique can be extended to study games with simultaneous actions.


Two Of A Kind: Are Norms Of Honor A Species Of Morality?, Toby Handfield, John Thrasher Jun 2019

Two Of A Kind: Are Norms Of Honor A Species Of Morality?, Toby Handfield, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Should the norms of honor cultures be classified as a variety of morality? In this paper, we address this question by considering various empirical bases on which norms can be taxonomically organised. This question is of interest both as an exercise in philosophy of social science, and for its potential implications in meta-ethical debates. Using recent data from anthropology and evolutionary game theory, we argue that the most productive classification emphasizes the strategic role that moral norms play in generating assurance and stabilizing cooperation. Because honor norms have a similar functional role, this account entails honor norms are indeed a …


Cooperation Among Strangers With And Without A Monetary System, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari Jan 2019

Cooperation Among Strangers With And Without A Monetary System, Maria Bigoni, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

Human societies prosper when their members move beyond local exchange and cooperate with outsiders in the creation of wealth. Collaboration of this type presents formidable challenges because interaction is impersonal, reciprocity is unfeasible and trust cannot be easily established. Here we study this cooperation problem by modeling strategic interaction among strangers through an Intertemporal Exchange Game. The setup can be easily implemented in the laboratory to study a variety of cooperation-enhancing institutions. In particular, we study the role of a fiat monetary system by introducing intrinsically worthless tokens that can be offered in exchange for cooperation. The experiments show that …