Cooperation and Self-Control

合作与自我控制

• 批准号: 0951462
• 负责人: Drew Fudenberg
• 金额: $ 30.92万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0951462&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cooperation; Self; Control

This award funds research in game theory. The research answers two questions: First, how robust is the finding that repeated play permits more cooperative equilibrium outcomes than does one-shot play? And second, how can the standard model of rational decision making be generalized to account for various ways that real behavior deviates from that model while retaining much of the model's parsimony and force?Work on the first question builds on the large literature on repeated games. In the earliest work on this topic, such as the familiar prisoner's dilemma,each player observes the intended action of the others every period, so it is easy to tell if someone has cheated on an implicit agreement to cooperate. In many settings, though, players observe only imperfect signals of one another's actions. One classis example is a repeated partnership game, where the probability that the period' task is done well, or completed at all, depends on both the effort of the players and on random factors, and neither player directly observes the effort of the other. With typical parameters, the efficient arrangement is for both partners to work, but if the game is played a single time with an unfamiliar opponent, the equilibrium outcome is for the partners to act selfishly and shirk. Past work has shown that there can nevertheless be cooperative equilibria in these games if the players interact repeatedly and are sufficiently patient. Roughly speaking,in these equilibria the players cooperate so long as the track record of the partnership is sufficiently good; they have an incentive to do so because they know that a series of bad outcomes will lead to a breakdown of cooperation.The PI analyzes two extensions of this idea. In the first, players do not know e.g. the productivity of effort, so that they do not know how likely a good outcome is even if both partners work. The research question is to determine whether and when the partners will still be able to use the 'shadow of the future' to cooperate even though initially the causes of the observed outcomes are initially unclear. In the second extension, players will observe a noisy signal of other players actions (such as group output so far) at privately known times. In this case when a player audits the current performance of the group he is uncertain of just when others last observed it and of what they saw, which typically makes it harder for players to coordinate on cooperative play. Once again, the focus will be on finding conditions that allow self-interested players to cooperate in their common interest.As a counterpoint to these theoretical analyses, the investigator also conducts laboratory experiments on repeated games with noisy signals. A pilot study done shows that subjects can and do cooperate despite the increased complexity of the noisy environment; the project studies just what sorts of strategies subjects actually use and which strategies would be most successful.The second project is based on the dual-self model of self-control, which gives a precise mathematical formalization of the idea that some observed individual decisions are the result of a within-subject game between a short-run impulsive self and a cooler, more rational long run self. The dual-self model has already been shown to provide a unified explanation of a range of empirical facts which had previously been explained with separate models, such as a desire for self-commitment (e.g. not buying Scotch for fear it will be consumed too quickly, or locking up savings in illiquid and hard-to-access securities), time-inconsistent choice (preferring $100 today to $110 tomorrow, but preferring $110 in 366 days to $100 in 365 days) and the Allais paradox of decision theory. The project will further expand the model to better fit the heterogeneity of real-world risk preferences, and to provide a unified treatment of small-stakes risk aversion and the decreasing marginal utility of winnings that is implicit in most experiments on social preferences. Preliminary work has calibrated the model to several data sets, the project will use the model to explore an even broader range of behavior.The broader impacts of this award include important interdisciplinary contributions and training graduate students in a number of scientific disciplines. The project?s work spans several subfields of economics and also connects to other disciplines. It will help strengthen ties between economic theorists and experimenters interested in behavioral economics, between economists working on repeated games and their counterparts in mathematics, and between economists working on interactive learning and their counterparts in computer science. The grant will also provide support for graduate students doing research on related topics. Taking a longer term view, we are hopeful that the proposed research will enhance our understanding of how and when reciprocal altruism leads to cooperation; this is of fundamental importance in many branches of social science and is also a key issue in evolutionary biology.

该奖项资助博弈论研究。 研究回答了两个问题：第一，重复游戏比一次性游戏允许更多的合作均衡结果的发现有多可靠？第二，如何将理性决策的标准模型推广到解释真实的行为偏离该模型的各种方式，同时保留模型的大部分简约性和力量？关于第一个问题的研究建立在大量关于重复博弈的文献基础上。 在这个主题的早期研究中，比如我们熟悉的囚徒困境，每个参与者在每个阶段都会观察其他参与者的预期行动，所以很容易判断出是否有人在合作的隐含协议上作弊。然而，在许多情况下，玩家只能观察到彼此行动的不完美信号。一个经典的例子是重复的伙伴关系游戏，在这个游戏中，这一时期的任务完成得很好或完成的概率取决于参与者的努力和随机因素，并且没有参与者直接观察到另一个人的努力。 在典型的参数下，有效的安排是双方都能工作，但如果只和一个不熟悉的对手玩一次游戏，均衡的结果是合作伙伴自私地行动和逃避。过去的研究表明，在这些博弈中，如果参与者反复互动并且有足够的耐心，仍然可以存在合作均衡。粗略地说，在这些均衡中，只要伙伴关系的历史记录足够好，参与者就会合作;他们有这样做的动机，因为他们知道一系列糟糕的结果将导致合作的破裂。在第一种情况下，参与者不知道例如努力的生产力，因此他们不知道即使双方都工作，好结果的可能性有多大。研究的问题是，以确定是否以及何时合作伙伴将仍然能够使用“未来的阴影”进行合作，即使最初观察到的结果的原因最初是不清楚的。 在第二个扩展中，玩家将在私下已知的时间观察到其他玩家行为的噪声信号（例如迄今为止的组输出）。 在这种情况下，当一个参与者审核团队的当前表现时，他不确定其他人最后一次观察到它是什么时候，以及他们看到了什么，这通常会使参与者在合作游戏中更难协调。 再次，重点将是寻找条件，让自私的球员合作，在他们的共同利益。作为对这些理论分析的对位，研究人员还进行了实验室实验中重复的游戏与嘈杂的信号。一项初步研究表明，尽管嘈杂的环境越来越复杂，但受试者仍然能够合作;该项目研究的是受试者实际使用的策略类型以及哪些策略最成功。第二个项目是基于自我控制的双自我模型，它给出了一个精确的数学形式化的想法，一些观察到的个人决定是一个短期的，冲动型的自我和冷静、理性的长期自我。 双重自我模型已经被证明为一系列先前用不同模型解释的经验事实提供了统一的解释，例如对自我承诺的渴望（例如，不购买苏格兰威士忌，因为担心它会被消耗得太快，或者将储蓄锁定在流动性差和难以获得的证券上），时间不一致的选择（今天100美元比明天110美元更好，但366天后110美元比365天后100美元更好）和决策理论的阿莱悖论。该项目将进一步扩展该模型，以更好地适应现实世界风险偏好的异质性，并提供一个统一的处理小赌注的风险厌恶和利润的边际效用递减，这是隐含在大多数社会偏好的实验。初步工作已经校准了几个数据集的模型，该项目将使用该模型来探索更广泛的行为。该奖项的更广泛的影响包括重要的跨学科贡献和培养研究生在一些科学学科。 项目？他的工作跨越了经济学的几个子领域，也与其他学科相联系。它将有助于加强经济理论家和对行为经济学感兴趣的实验者之间的联系，研究重复博弈的经济学家和数学同行之间的联系，以及研究互动学习的经济学家和计算机科学同行之间的联系。该补助金还将为研究生提供相关主题研究的支持。从长远来看，我们希望拟议中的研究将提高我们对互惠利他主义如何以及何时导致合作的理解;这在社会科学的许多分支中具有根本的重要性，也是进化生物学中的一个关键问题。