stag hunt game

The main result of this thesis is that people follow trust norms when making the trust decisions that underpin economic performance. Specifically, mean trust is shown to be a statistically significant determinant of individual trust. This empirical result, which implies that there are endogenous social interactions effects in trust decisions, is found in a Random Utility Model with Social Interactions (RUM-SI), in which people have rational expectations and make binary decisions, to trust or not to trust others.

A theoretical model of trust as a recurrent 2 × 2 coordination game with Stag hunt payoffs, played adaptively by randomly matched players, explains how boundedly rational agents make coherent, mutually consistent decisions despite the knowledge and information constraints of the trust game. The theoretical model therefore provides justification for the model closure assumption in the RUM-SI, while its social learning dynamics allows boundedly rational agents to behave ‘as if’ they were fully rational, as was assumed in the RUM-SI. Hence, there is consistency in the behavioural assumptions of both the theoretical and empirical models.

These models have multiple aggregate trust equilibria in high, medium and low trust, which explains both the local (national) conformity and the global diversity in trust decisions evident in the data.

High trust and low trust equilibria are stable norms, while medium trust is unstable and thus is not a norm. The theoretical model implies that in the (very) long run all countries would be caught in stochastically stable low trust traps. Institutions prevent both the short run collapse and the long run persistence of low trust.

A tipping mechanism or informal institution would be required to transform low trust states into high trust states. Formal institutional reform, which itself cannot effect the initial transformation, will then be required to prevent reversion to the stochastically stable state in the longer run.

We argue that there is a stream in the Talmud that attributes the responsibility to one player alone in the case of a joint crime/joint tort and even in dividing the credits for a joint Mitzvah. We used the game theory to investigate which incentives are provided by this approach, which games are created, which games are blocked, and to which results this approach leads. In this paper, we present some Talmudic games. Although in Jewish law, a sinner cannot be a witness, one Talmudic rabbi proposes a rule that, in the case of a joint crime, one of the criminals may testify against a friend (who is the other criminal), but the court will not recognize the self-incriminating part of the testimony. The testimony of the criminal will also neutralize the friend\u27s capacity to testify against the criminal since the friend will be considered a sinner after the initial testimony. We argue that this rule may lead to maximal deterrence. We also investigate other Talmudic rules that impose re...

This research aims to dispel the myth that export cartels should be prohibited because they restrain competition and, thus, holds back economic development. It also proposes the conditions under which export cartels promote economic development. In contrast to the myth, this research argues that, when it comes to economic development, competition is not always desirable and, therefore, that export cartels should be formed under certain conditions. In other words, the doctrine that maximum competition is optimal competition is not applicable when the objective is economic development. Moreover, as export cartels from developing countries do not possess market power in the global market, if they facilitate their firms, which are mainly SMEs, to be able to export, competition in the global market is increased, rather than decreased. We then propose the concept of competition relocation, which argues that cartelisation does not eliminate competition but relocate competition from the act...

We argue that there is a stream in the Talmud that attributes the responsibility to one player alone in the case of a joint crime/joint tort and even in dividing the credits for a joint Mitzvah. We used the game theory to investigate which incentives are provided by this approach, which games are created, which games are blocked, and to which results this approach leads. In this paper, we present some Talmudic games. Although in Jewish law, a sinner cannot be a witness, one Talmudic rabbi proposes a rule that, in the case of a joint crime, one of the criminals may testify against a friend (who is the other criminal), but the court will not recognize the self-incriminating part of the testimony. The testimony of the criminal will also neutralize the friend\u27s capacity to testify against the criminal since the friend will be considered a sinner after the initial testimony. We argue that this rule may lead to maximal deterrence. We also investigate other Talmudic rules that impose re...

Cooperation has been one of the most foundational aspect of human society and is frequently studied via use of “The Stag Hunt” which has been used to tease out factors which may influence cooperation. The present study is the first study to attempt to influence human cooperation by means of positive imagery. Participants included 33 males and 72 females) who listened to either an a 7-minute audio designed to encourage them to trust others or an audio designed to encourage them to trust themselves. Participants played 40 rounds of the Stag Hunt game. The total number of times the participant played stag was recorded. An independent-samples t-test found a significant difference in the scores for the trust others (M= 21.47, SD=3.28) and the trust self (M=19.82, SD=3.92) conditions. This suggests guided imagery tasks may influence cooperation

Owing to its mathematical ability to explain social interaction and the decision-making process, the science of game theory pioneered by the mathematician John Nash in the 1950s has been successfully used in fields such as economics and political science to biology, military tactics, and psychology. In game theory, there are basically two types of strategic interaction: cooperation and competition. Both are based on Nash equilibrium, which constitutes the best set of decisions made by the participants in either cooperative or competitive games regardless of what the other participants might choose to do. In other words, each player's gains or losses are influenced by other players' choices and decisions. The stag-hunt game, first described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is one such game wherein the players can either hunt a stag together or each hunt a hare separately. Hence, it yields two Nash equilibria: cooperation (Stag) and non-cooperation, also called defection (Hare, Hare).