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Article Dans Une Revue Rationality and Society Année : 2016

Opportunism, Trust and Cooperation

Résumé

Even when there is a potential danger of opportunism, economic agents often initiate contracts or engage in trust. Considering a world with two types of agents, opportunists and non-opportunists, interacting under incomplete information, this article develops a simple two-stage game theoretic model to show how trust and cooperation can emerge in a one-shot interaction, even in the absence of a supporting incentive mechanism. Two classic paradigms are considered: the prisoner's dilemma and the game of chicken. In the context of the prisoner's dilemma, trust depends on the exogenous probability of having a non-opportunist partner, while in the game of chicken trust is purely a function of the payoffs. Contrary to intuition, a high ratio of non-opportunistic agents in the population does not favor contract initiation in the game of chicken and a strong presence of opportunists does not act as an impediment to respecting commitments.

Dates et versions

hal-02088730 , version 1 (03-04-2019)

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Marie-Laure Cabon-Dhersin, Shyama V. Ramani. Opportunism, Trust and Cooperation. Rationality and Society, 2016, 19 (2), pp.203-228. ⟨10.1177/1043463107077391⟩. ⟨hal-02088730⟩
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