Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/296441 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theoretical Economics [ISSN:] 1555-7561 [Volume:] 18 [Issue:] 4 [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 1345-1373
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
We study large-population repeated games where players are symmetric but not anonymous, so player-specific rewards and punishments are feasible. Players may be commitment types who always take the same action. Even though players are not anonymous, we show that an anti-folk theorem holds when the commitment action is "population dominant," meaning that it secures a payoff greater than the population average payoff. For example, voluntary public goods provision in large populations is impossible when commitment types never contribute, even if monetary rewards can be targeted to contributors; however, provision is possible if non-contributors can be subjected to involuntary fines. A folk theorem under incomplete information provides a partial converse to our result. Along the way, we develop some general results on symmetric games with incomplete information and/or repeated play.
Subjects: 
commitment types
free-rider problem
incomplete information
large populations
population dominant action
Repeated games
symmetric games
JEL: 
C72
C73
D82
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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