We characterize the class of symmetric two-player games in which tit-for-tat cannot be beaten even by very sophisticated opponents in a repeated game. It turns out to be the class of exact potential games. More generally, there is a class of simple imitation rules that includes tit-for-tat but...

Online and offline gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry.However, games of chance are prohibited or tightly regulated in many jurisdictions. Thus, the question whether a game predominantly depends on skill or chance has important legal and regulatory implications. In this paper, we...

In John Nash’s proofs for the existence of (Nash) equilibria based on Brouwer’s theorem, an iteration mapping is used. A continuous— time analogue of the same mapping has been studied even earlier by Brown and von Neumann. This differential equation has recently been suggested as a...

In this note we apply the notion of absent-mindedness (see Piccione and Rubinstein, 1994), which is a form of imperfect recall, to Rosenthal's (1981) centipede game. We show that for standard versions of the centipede game a subgame perfect equilibrium exists in which play is continued almost to...

We report results of an internet experiment designed to test the theory of informational cascades in financial markets. More than 6000 subjects, including a subsample of 267 consultants from an international consulting firm, participated in the experiment. As predicted by theory, we find that...

We show in this paper that none of the existing static evolutionary stability concepts (ESS, CSS, uninvadability, NIS) is sufficient to guarantee dynamic stability in the weak topology with respect to standard evolutionary dynamics if the strategy space is continuous. We propose a new concept,...

This paper addresses the relation between the degree of decentralization in a population and the probability of coordinating on an efficient outcome. An evolutionary learning mechanism with a group structure that allows players to "vote with their feet" is introduced. In contrast to most of the...

A convention can be seen as the standard way of playing a game. If different conventions exist in various geographical, social or other entities (called "towns") and if there is some mobility between these towns, which conventions, if any, will emerge as the successful ones? A simple...

We provide a new explanation for the apparent underpricing of initial public offerings applicable to large, regulated firms like telecommunications companies. Under the assumption that regulation is subject to political pressure by voters we demonstrate that it may be rational for issuers to...

We show that in symmetric two-player exact potential games, the simple decision rule "imitate-if-better" cannot be beaten by any strategy in a repeated game by more than the maximal payoff difference of the one-period game. Our results apply to many interesting games including examples like 2x2...