CEPA Discussion Papers
ISSN (online) 2628-653X
URN urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-series-954
CEPA Discussion Papers are edited by
Rainald Borck, Lisa Bruttel, Marco Caliendo, Maik Heinemann and Alexander Kritikos.
The CEPA Discussion Papers Series is meant to disseminate recent research results by CEPA members to the scientific community and the interested public. Research findings published in a CEPA Discussion Paper reflect on-going research prior to publication in peer-reviewed journal articles. If you consider submitting an article to CEPA, please look at our submission guidelines.
URN urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-series-954
CEPA Discussion Papers are edited by
Rainald Borck, Lisa Bruttel, Marco Caliendo, Maik Heinemann and Alexander Kritikos.
The CEPA Discussion Papers Series is meant to disseminate recent research results by CEPA members to the scientific community and the interested public. Research findings published in a CEPA Discussion Paper reflect on-going research prior to publication in peer-reviewed journal articles. If you consider submitting an article to CEPA, please look at our submission guidelines.
Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Year of publication
- 2019 (1)
Document Type
- Working Paper (1)
Language
- English (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (1)
Keywords
- cooperation (1)
- experiment (1)
- prisoners' dilemma (1)
- strategic ignorance (1)
Institute
10
Being ignorant of key aspects of a strategic interaction can represent an advantage rather than a handicap. We study one particular context in which ignorance can be beneficial: iterated strategic interactions in which voluntary cooperation may be sustained into the final round if players voluntarily forego knowledge about the time horizon. We experimentally examine this option to remain ignorant about the time horizon in a finitely repeated two-person prisoners’ dilemma game. We confirm that pairs without horizon knowledge avoid the drop in cooperation that otherwise occurs toward the end of the game. However, this effect is superposed by cooperation declining more rapidly in pairs without horizon knowledge during the middle phase of the game, especially if players do not know that the other player also wanted to remain ignorant of the time horizon.