[PEN-L:4723] Re: collective goods problem, cont.

[gomersni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (C.N.Gomersall)]

Jim Devine wrote:

>But if the number of prisoners increases to 3 in this kind of
>PD, the strategy tends to fall apart. Someone finks, but the
>prisoner has even less information about who it was who finked. So she
>doesn't know who to punish. With 4, the problem gets even worse. It
>seems to me that the problem would increase exponentially with the
>number of participants.

You might want to take a look at the "Papers & Proceedings" issue of the
AER, May 1993 (pp.149-161): pieces by Bergstrom & Stark, and by a certain
Herbert A. Simon. I haven't re-read them but, if I remember, they suggest
that a small number of cooperating players can successfully invade a
population of "defectors" (bad guys); the cooperators do so well in
dealings with one another (even though they're also dealing with the bad
guys too; they don't know who's who) that the cooperating subpopulation
flourishes, relatively speaking, and may eventually take over.

At least, that's how I remember the story.

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C.N.Gomersall                  gomersni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Luther College

http://econ-www.newcastle.edu.au/economics/nick/nick.html
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