Adopting an evolutionary approach, we explain the conjectural variations firms may hold in duopoly. Given conjectures, firms play the market game rationally. Success in the market game determines fitness in the evolutionary game. We show that the unique conjectures which are evolutionarily...

Standard one- and two-population models for evolutionary games are the limit cases of a uniparametric family combining intra- and intergroup interactions. Our setup interpolates between both extremes with a coupling parameter k. For the example of the hawk-dove game, we analyze the replicator...

Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almostexclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by materialincentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthy and to punishuntrustworthiness do support trade. In our model, intrinsically motivatedplayers are...

If the (un)trustworthy are rare, people will talk about them, making their detectionmore reliable and / or less costly. When, however, both types appear in large numbers,detecting (un)trustworthiness will be considerably more difficult and possibly too costly.Based on Güth and Kliemt (2000) we...

Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and abuyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthinessand trust. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedbackdetermine the gains from...

The main results of our indirect evolutionary approach to trust in large interactions suggest that trsutworthiness must be detectable if good conduct in trust-relationships is to survive. According to theoretical reasoning there is a niche then for an organization offering a possibly costly...