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The elementary economics of social dilemmas
Author(s) -
Curtis Eaton B.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
canadian journal of economics/revue canadienne d'économique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1540-5982
pISSN - 0008-4085
DOI - 10.1111/j.0008-4085.2004.00249.x
Subject(s) - social dilemma , dilemma , diagrammatic reasoning , incentive , delegation , prisoner's dilemma , epistemology , sociology , space (punctuation) , positive economics , microeconomics , economics , mathematical economics , computer science , management , philosophy , programming language , operating system
. A social dilemma is, in essence, a prisoners’ dilemma in a continuous strategy space. I discuss a number of social dilemmas that have caught my attention, offer an elementary, diagrammatic synthesis of them, and discuss some of the economic insights that the diagrams capture, including incentives for pre‐commitment. Finally, I model pre‐commitment via delegation and link results to the literature on the evolution of preferences.