Phase Diagram of Prisoner's Dilemma: Empirical Evidence from the Human Subjects Experiments
Posted: 31 May 2009 Last revised: 2 Jun 2009
Date Written: May 30, 2009
Abstract
This paper presents the empirical phase diagram showing the cooperation phase, the mixed phase and the defection phase of prisoner’s dilemma experiment. The empirical data includes 21 experiments using a total of 350 human subjects. Experimental parameters are the possibility of continuation within [0, 1], the sizes of population within [12, 24], and a prisoner's dilemma payoff matrix (S, R, T, P) = (-2, 2, 4, 0). Twenty-one different combinations of these parameters were used in the experiments. The results provide the first empirical instance for Folk Theorem.
Keywords: phase diagram, repeated prisoner’s dilemma, fixed and random matching model, experimental economics
JEL Classification: C72, C73, C91, C92
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation