The Evolution of Strategic Sophistication.
This paper investigates the evolutionary foundation for our ability to attribute preferences to others, an ability that is central to conventional game theory. We argue here that learning others' preferences allows individuals to efficiently modify their behavior in strategic environments with a per...
| Published in: | American Economic Review Vol. 106; no. 4; pp. 1046 - 1073 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
American Economic Association
Apr2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=114013731&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 114013731 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00028282 AER jtl: American Economic Review issn: 00028282 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Apr2016 vid: 106 iid: 4 pid: 22 pub: American Economic Association artinfo: ui: 114013731 10.1257/aer.20140105 ppf: 1046 ppct: 27 formats: tig: atl: The Evolution of Strategic Sophistication. aug: au: Robalino, Nikolaus Robson, Arthur affil: Department of Economics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623 (e-mail: ) Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6 Canada (e-mail: ) su: Game theory Social choice Economic equilibrium Stochastic processes Probability density function sug: subj: Game theory Social choice Economic equilibrium Stochastic processes Probability density function ab: This paper investigates the evolutionary foundation for our ability to attribute preferences to others, an ability that is central to conventional game theory. We argue here that learning others' preferences allows individuals to efficiently modify their behavior in strategic environments with a persistent element of novelty. Agents with the ability to learn have a sharp, unambiguous advantage over those who are less sophisticated because the former agents extrapolate to novel circumstances information about opponents' preferences that was learned previously. This advantage holds even with a suitably small cost to reflect the additional cognitive complexity involved. (JEL C73, D11, D83) pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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