Abstract
The Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) is probably the most famous two-person game in which a fundamental divergence between individual and collective rationalities arises: If the agents play noncooperatively, an equilibrium is achieved which, however, does not constitute the best available solution. Such a PD situation characterizes many situations of voluntary cooperation, e.g., the provision of the global public good climate protection. But in reality agents are – despite the predictions of the PD game – often willing to cooperate voluntarily to some degree which has been confirmed by experimental economics. Furthermore there are a lot of institutional devices which help overcome the cooperation dilemma in a PD situation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Axelrod R (1984) The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, New York
Cox TH, Lobel S, McLeod PL (1991) Effects of ethic group cultural differences on cooperative and competitive behavior on a group task. Acad Manage J 34:827–847
Croson R, Gneezy U (2009) Gender differences in preferences. J Econ Lit 47:1–27
Ellingsen T, Johannesson M, Mollerstrom J, Munkhammar S (2012) Social framing effects: preferences or beliefs? Games Econ Behav 76:117–130
Fehr E, Schmidt KM (2006) The economics of fairness, reciprocity and altruism – Experimental evidence and new theories. In: Kolm SC (ed) Handbook of the economics of giving, altruism and reciprocity. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 615–691
Jones G (2008) Are smarter groups more cooperative? Evidence from prisoner’s dilemma experiments, 1959–2003. J Econ Behav Organ 68:489–497
Kendall G, Yao X, Chong SY (2007) The iterated prisoner’s dilemma: 20 years on. Advances in natural computation. World Scientific Pub Co, Singapore
Khadjavi M, Lange A (2013) Prisoners and their dilemma. J Econ Behav Organ 92:163–175
Osborne MJ (2009) An introduction to game theory. Oxford University Press, New York
Ostrom E (1990) Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ostrom E (2000) Collective action and the evolution of social norms. Econ Perspect 14:137–158
Rapoport A, Chammah AM (1965) Prisoner’s dilemma: a study of conflict and cooperation. Michigan University Press, Ann Arbor
Sally D (1995) Conversation and cooperation in social dilemmas: a meta-analysis of experiments from 1958 to 1992. Ration Soc 7:58–92
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Buchholz, W., Eichenseer, M. (2019). Prisoner’s Dilemma. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G.B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_557
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_557
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-7752-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7753-2
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences