The iterative prisoners' dilemma Lawrence

The iterative prisoners' dilemma

Lawrence Solum covers the iterative prisoner's dilemma at his Legal Theory Blog. On Sunday he posted an introduction to the iterated prisoners' dilemma for law students, here: "Legal Theory Lexicon: The Prisoner's Dilemma"

"One of the most useful tools in analyzing legal rules and the policy problems to which they apply is game theory. The basic idea of game theory is simple. Many human interactions can be modeled as games. To use game theory, we build simple models of real world situations as a game. Thus, we might model civil litigation as a game played by plaintiffs against defendants. Or we might model the confirmation of federal judges by the Senate as a game played by Democrats and Republicans. This week's installment of the Legal Theory Lexicon discusses one important example of game theory, the prisoner's dilemma. This introduction is very basic--aimed at a first year law student with an interest in legal theory...."

On Wednesday he posts a follow up, here: "More on Iterative Prisoner's Dilemmas: The Grim Trigger Solution".