Myrna Wooders () (Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University) Edward Cartwright () (Department of Economics, Keynes College, University of Kent) Reinhard Selten (Department of Economics, University of Bonn)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
In the literature of psychology and economics it is frequently observed that individuals tend to conform in their behavior to the behavior of similar individuals. A fundamental question is whether the outcome of such behavior can be consistent with self-interest. We propose that this consistency requires the existence of a Nash or approximate Nash equilibrium that induces a partition of the player set into relatively few societies, each consisting of similar individuals playing the same or similar strategies. In this paper we introduce a notion of a society and characterize a family of games admitting the existence of such an equilibrium. We also introduce the concept of 'crowding types' into our description of players and distinguish between the crowding type of a player -- those characteristics of a player that have direct effects on others -- and his tastes, taken to directly affect only that player. With the assumptions of 'within crowding type anonymity' and 'linearity of taste-types' we show that the number of groups can be uniformly bounded.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University in its series Working Papers with number
0513.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)