Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/327128 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
DICE Discussion Paper No. 428
Publisher: 
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE), Düsseldorf
Abstract: 
We analyze infinitely repeated multiplayer prisoner's dilemmas in continuous-time experiments. As the number of players changes, our design keeps the payoffs of the all-defection, all-cooperation, and unilateral- defection and -cooperation outcomes constant, thus controlling for the minimum discount factor required for cooperation to be an equilibrium. For all group sizes, we study three different variants of the prisoner's dilemma. In further treatments, we allow actions to be chosen from a continuous set. We find that cooperation rates decrease with the number of players, a result that we can attribute to the increased strategic uncertainty in larger groups. The different payoff matrices also affect cooperation. For the payoff matrices with lower levels of cooperation, the group-size effect is weaker. The availability of a continuous action set strongly reduces cooperation rates.
Subjects: 
cooperation
dilemma
experiment
JEL: 
C72
C73
C92
ISBN: 
978-3-86304-427-5
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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