IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pit/wpaper/495.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Group Size and Cooperation Among Strangers

Author

Listed:
  • John Duffy
  • Huan Xie

Abstract

We study how group size affects cooperation in an infinitely repeated n-player Prisoner`s Dilemma (PD) game. In each repetition of the game, groups of size n ≤ M are randomly and anonymously matched from a fixed population of size M to play the n-player PD stage game. We provide conditions for which the contagious strategy (Kandori, 1992) sustains a social norm of cooperation among all M players. Our main finding is that if agents are sufficiently patient, a social norm of society-wide cooperation becomes easier to sustain under the contagious strategy as n → M.

Suggested Citation

  • John Duffy & Huan Xie, 2012. "Group Size and Cooperation Among Strangers," Working Paper 495, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:pit:wpaper:495
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ewi-ssl.pitt.edu/econ/files/faculty/wp/120808_wp_DuffyJohn_groupsize16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pedro Bó, 2007. "Social norms, cooperation and inequality," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 30(1), pages 89-105, January.
    2. Okada, Akira, 1993. "The Possibility of Cooperation in an n-Person Prisoners' Dilemma with Institutional Arrangements," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(3), pages 629-656, November.
    3. Glenn Ellison, 1994. "Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma with Anonymous Random Matching," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 567-588.
    4. Isaac, R. Mark & Walker, James M. & Williams, Arlington W., 1994. "Group size and the voluntary provision of public goods : Experimental evidence utilizing large groups," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-36, May.
    5. Xie, Huan & Lee, Yong-Ju, 2012. "Social norms and trust among strangers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 548-555.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Duffy, John & Xie, Huan, 2016. "Group size and cooperation among strangers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PA), pages 55-74.
    2. John Duffy & Huan Xie & Yong-Ju Lee, 2013. "Social norms, information, and trust among strangers: theory and evidence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 669-708, March.
    3. Josef Falkinger, 2004. "Noncooperative Support of Public Norm Enforcement in Large Societies," CESifo Working Paper Series 1368, CESifo.
    4. Takako Fujiwara-Greve & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Nobue Suzuki, 2015. "Efficiency may improve when defectors exist," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 60(3), pages 423-460, November.
    5. Takahashi, Satoru, 2010. "Community enforcement when players observe partners' past play," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 42-62, January.
    6. Kamei, Kenju, 2020. "Group size effect and over-punishment in the case of third party enforcement of social norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 395-412.
    7. Deb, Joyee & Gonzalez-Diaz, Julio, 2019. "Enforcing social norms: Trust-building and community enforcement," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(4), November.
    8. Conley, John P. & Neilson, William, 2009. "Endogenous games and equilibrium adoption of social norms and ethical constraints," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 761-774, July.
    9. Ghidoni, Riccardo & Cleave, Blair L. & Suetens, Sigrid, 2019. "Perfect and imperfect strangers in social dilemmas," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 148-159.
    10. Deb, Joyee & González-Díaz, Julio & Renault, Jérôme, 2016. "Uniform folk theorems in repeated anonymous random matching games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 1-23.
    11. Maria Bigoni & Gabriele Camera & Marco Casari, 2019. "Cooperation among strangers with and without a monetary system," Working Papers 19-01, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    12. Kohei Nitta, 2014. "The Effect of Income Heterogeneity in An Experiment with Global and Local Public Goods," Working Papers 201403, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    13. Gabriele Camera & Cary Deck & David Porter, 2020. "Do economic inequalities affect long-run cooperation and prosperity?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(1), pages 53-83, March.
    14. Kawasaki, Ryo & Muto, Shigeo, 2009. "Farsighted stability in provision of perfectly "Lumpy" public goods," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 98-109, July.
    15. Ambrus, Attila & Pathak, Parag A., 2011. "Cooperation over finite horizons: A theory and experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 500-512.
    16. Keser, Claudia, 1996. "Voluntary contributions to a public good when partial contribution is a dominant strategy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 359-366, March.
    17. Ye-Feng Chen & Shu-Guang Jiang & Marie Claire Villeval, 2015. "The Tragedy of Corruption. Corruption as a social dilemma," Working Papers 1531, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    18. Matthais Sutter, 2002. "Public Bad Prevention by Majority Voting on Redistribution – Experimental Evidence," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 11(5), pages 415-428, September.
    19. Brunner, Eric & Sonstelie, Jon, 2003. "School finance reform and voluntary fiscal federalism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2157-2185, September.
    20. Ely, Jeffrey C. & Valimaki, Juuso, 2002. "A Robust Folk Theorem for the Prisoner's Dilemma," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 84-105, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    N-player Prisoner's Dilemma; Repeated Games; Folk Theorem; Contagion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pit:wpaper:495. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/depghus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.