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Prisoner’s Dilemma

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Encyclopedia of Law and Economics

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Synonyms

Free-riding; Individual vs. collective rationality; Social dilemma; Tragedy of the commons

Definition

A prisoner’s dilemma game is a noncooperative game in which each of the (in the standard case two) players has an incentive to choose the noncooperative strategy (e.g., not to contribute to a public good) even though both players would become better off by choosing the cooperative strategy (e.g., to contribute).

The Standard Prisoner Story

The Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) is probably one of the most famous games analyzed in game theory. Its name refers to a rather artificial story conceived by the American mathematician Albert Tucker in order to convey the structure of the PD game to a broader public: Two prisoners – A(ndrea) and B(ritney) – who have jointly committed crimes are interrogated by the police separately without any chance of communicating with each other. Actually, the police cannot take enough evidence to convict them of a serious crime (what the police clearly would...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Wolfgang Buchholz & Michael Eichenseer

Authors
  1. Wolfgang Buchholz
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  2. Michael Eichenseer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wolfgang Buchholz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Montpellier, France

    Alain Marciano

  2. Dept DiGSPES, Univ del Piemonte Orientale Dept DiGSPES, Alessandria, Italy

    Giovanni Battista Ramello

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Buchholz, W., Eichenseer, M. (2021). Prisoner’s Dilemma. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G.B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_557-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_557-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-7883-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7883-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Prisoner’s Dilemma
    Published:
    19 August 2021

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_557-2

  2. Original

    Prisoner’s Dilemma
    Published:
    10 June 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_557-1

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