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More than half a century after the first experiment on the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma, evidence on whether cooperation decreases with experience—as suggested by backward induction—remains inconclusive. This article provides a meta-analysis of prior experimental research and reports the results of a new experiment to elucidate how cooperation varies with the environment in this canonical game. We describe forces that affect initial play (formation of cooperation) and unraveling (breakdown of cooperation). First, contrary to the backward induction prediction, the parameters of the repeated game have a significant effect on initial cooperation. We identify how these parameters impact the value of cooperation—as captured by the size of the basin of attraction of always defect—to account for an important part of this effect. Second, despite these initial differences, the evolution of behavior is consistent with the unraveling logic of backward induction for all parameter combinations. Importantly, despite the seemingly contradictory results across studies, this article establishes a systematic pattern of behavior: subjects converge to use threshold strategies that conditionally cooperate until a threshold round; conditional on establishing cooperation, the first defection round moves earlier with experience. Simulation results generated from a learning model estimated at the subject level provide insights into the long-term dynamics and the forces that slow down the unraveling of cooperation.

A growing experimental literature studies the determinants of cooperation in infinitely repeated games, tests different predictions of the theory, and suggests an empirical solution to the problem of multiple equilibria. To provide a robust description of the literature’s findings, we gather and analyze a metadata set of experiments on infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma games. The experimental data show that cooperation is affected by infinite repetition and is more likely to arise when it can be supported in equilibrium. However, the fact that cooperation can be supported in equilibrium does not imply that most subjects will cooperate. High cooperation rates will emerge only when the parameters of the repeated game are such that cooperation is very robust to strategic uncertainty. We also review the results regarding the effect of imperfect monitoring, changing partners, and personal characteristics on cooperation and the strategies used to support it.

We study the role of commitment in communication and its interactions with rules, which determine whether information is verifiable. Our framework nests models of cheap talk, information disclosure, and Bayesian persuasion. It predicts that commitment has opposite effects on information transmission under the two alternative rules. We leverage these contrasting forces to experimentally establish that subjects react to commitment in line with the main qualitative implications of the theory. Quantitatively, not all subjects behave as predicted. We show that a form of commitment blindness leads some senders to overcommunicate when information is verifiable and undercommunicate when it is not. This generates an unpredicted gap in information transmission across the two rules, suggesting a novel role for verifiable information in practice.

A usual criticism of the theory of infinitely repeated games is that it does not provide sharp predictions since there may be a multiplicity of equilibria. To address this issue, we present experimental evidence on the evolution of cooperation in infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma games as subjects gain experience. We show that cooperation may prevail in infinitely repeated games, but the conditions under which this occurs are more stringent than the subgame perfect conditions usually considered or even a condition based on risk dominance. (JEL C71, C73)

This paper presents a dynamic equilibrium model of a taxi market. The model is estimated using data from New York City yellow cabs. Two salient features by which most taxi markets deviate from the efficient market ideal are, first, matching frictions created by the need for both market sides to physically search for trading partners, and second, regulatory limitations to entry. To assess the importance of these features, we use the model to simulate the effect of changes in entry, alternative matching technologies, and different market density. We use the geographical features of the matching process to back out unobserved demand through a matching simulation. The matching function exhibits increasing returns to scale, which is important to understand the impact of changes in this market and has welfare implications. For instance, although alternative dispatch platforms can be more efficient than street-hailing, platform competition is harmful because it reduces effective density.

In experimental economics, where subjects participate in different sessions, observations across subjects of a given session might exhibit more correlation than observations across subjects in different sessions. The main goal of this paper is to clarify what are session-effects: what can cause them, what forms they can take, and what are the potential problems. It will be shown that standard solutions are at times inadequate, and that their properties are sometimes misunderstood.

This paper compares behavior under four different implementations of infinitely repeated games in the laboratory: the standard random termination method [proposed by Roth and Murnighan (J Math Psychol 17:189–198, 1978 )] and three other methods that de-couple the expected number of rounds and the discount factor. Two of these methods involve a fixed number of repetitions with payoff discounting, followed by random termination [proposed by Sabater-Grande and Georgantzis (J Econ Behav Organ 48:37–50, 2002 )] or followed by a coordination game [proposed in (Andersson and Wengström in J Econ Behav Organ 81:207–219, 2012 ; Cooper and Kuhn in Am Econ J Microecon 6:247–278, 2014a )]. We also propose a new method—block random termination—in which subjects receive feedback about termination in blocks of rounds. We find that behavior is consistent with the presence of dynamic incentives only with methods using random termination, with the standard method generating the highest level of cooperation. Subject behavior in the other two methods display two features: a higher level of stability in cooperation rates and less dependence on past experience. Estimates of the strategies used by subjects reveal that across implementations, even when the discount rate is the same, if interactions are expected to be longer defection increases and the use of the Grim strategy decreases.

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to study the effect of the monitoring structure on the play of the infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Keeping the strategic form of the stage game fixed, we examine the behavior of subjects when information about past actions is perfect (perfect monitoring), noisy but public (public monitoring), and noisy and private (private monitoring). We find that the subjects sustain cooperation in every treatment, but that their strategies differ across the three treatments. Specifically, the strategies under imperfect monitoring are both more complex and more lenient than those under perfect monitoring. The results show how the changes in strategies across monitoring structures mitigate the effect of noise in monitoring on efficiency.

The introduction of mandatory gender quotas in party lists is a reform that many countries have recently adopted or have been considering. The electoral system affects the incumbents' incentives to make such reforms, their details, and their effectiveness. We show that male incumbents can actually expect an increased incumbency advantage when gender quotas are introduced, if they are elected through single-member district majority rule. On the other hand, no expectation of male advantage can reduce the incumbents' fear of being replaced if they are elected through closed-list proportional representation. As France has both electoral systems, we validate the above argument using a formal model of constitutional design as well as an empirical analysis of the legislative elections in France, displaying the existence of male bias in the last three elections. We also show that parity may have Assembly composition effects and policy effects that vary with the electoral system.

We use a novel experimental design to reliably elicit subjects’ strategies in an infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma experiment with perfect monitoring. We find that three simple strategies represent the majority of the chosen strategies: Always Defect, Tit-for-Tat, and Grim. In addition, we identify how the strategies systematically vary with the parameters of the game. Finally, we use the elicited strategies to test the ability to recover strategies using statistical methods based on observed round-by-round cooperation choices and find that this can be done fairly well, but only under certain conditions.