Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/64489 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 657
Publisher: 
University of California, Economics Department, Santa Cruz, CA
Abstract: 
We study prisoner's dilemmas played in continuous time with flow payoffs over 60 seconds. In most cases, the median rate of mutual cooperation rises to 90% or more. Control sessions with 8-time repeated matchings achieve less than half as much cooperation, and cooperation rates approach zero in one-shot control sessions. In follow-up sessions with a variable number of subperiods, cooperation rates increase nearly linearly as the grid size decreases and, with one-second subperiods, they approach the level seen in continuous sessions. Our data support a strand of theory that explains how the capacity to respond rapidly stabilizes cooperation and destabilizes defection in the prisoner's dilemma.
Subjects: 
prisoner's dilemma
game theory
laboratory experiment
continuous time game
JEL: 
C73
C92
D74
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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