An Index of Competitiveness and Cooperativeness for Normal-Form Games

Thomas Demuynck, Christian Seel, Giang Tran*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

2 Citations (Web of Science)
35 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We develop an index of competitiveness and cooperativeness which is based on the primitives of a normal-form game, i.e., players, strategies and payoffs. The index relies on the unique decomposition of a given game into a zero-sum game and a common-interest game. The index decreases in the distance to its zero-sum part and it increases in the distance to its common-interest part. The comparative statics of our index coincide with economic intuition. The index also supports experimental findings in well-known classes of games in the sense that more cooperative and less competitive behavior correlates with lower values of the index.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)215-239
Number of pages25
JournalAmerican Economic Journal-Microeconomics
Volume14
Issue number2
Early online date2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2022

JEL classifications

  • c72 - Noncooperative Games
  • c71 - Cooperative Games

Keywords

  • DILEMMA

Cite this