No imitation—on local and group interaction, learning and reciprocity in prisoners' dilemma experiments
Oliver Kirchkamp and Rosemarie Nagel
Abstract:
This study disentangles experimentally imitation, reinforcement, and reciprocity in repeated prisoners' dilemmas. We compare a simple situation in which players interact only with their neighbours (local interaction) with one where players interact with all members of the population (group interaction). We observe choices under different information conditions and estimate parameters of a learning model. We find that imitation, while assumed to be a driving force in many models of spatial evolution, is often a negligible factor in the experiment. Behaviour is predominantly driven by reinforcement learning.JEL-Classification: C72, C92, D74, D83, H41, R12
Keywords: Local interaction, experiments, prisoner's dilemma, reinforcement, repeated games.
- You can download the SFB Working Paper 03-04 as well as the most recent version of the paper as PDF files.