Disappearing Private Reputations in Long-Run Relationships

Abstract:     
For games of public reputation with uncertainty over types and imperfect public monitoring, Cripps, Mailath, and Samuelson (2004) showed that an informed player facing short-lived uninformed opponents cannot maintain a permanent reputation for playing a strategy that is not part of an equilibrium of the game without uncertainty over types. This paper extends that result to games in which the uninformed player is long-lived and has private beliefs, so that the informed player's reputation is private.

Keywords: Reputation, Imperfect Monitoring, Repeated Games, Commitment, Private Beliefs

JEL Classifications: C70, C78

Working Paper Series