Costly Predation and the Distribution of Competence
- 1 June 2001
- journal article
- Published by American Economic Association in American Economic Review
- Vol. 91 (3) , 475-484
- https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.91.3.475
Abstract
An evolutionary game model shows how an equilibrium distribution of competence may evolve when members of a population prey on one another, but when predatory competence is costly to acquire. Under one interpretation, the competence distribution is an endogenously determined distribution of bounded rationality. An example shows how “tricksters” and “suckers” might coexist in the long run. The analysis leads to a curious result about a mixed equilibrium for a symmetric, zero-sum game. An increase in the costs of one or more competence levels has exactly zero effect on the fraction of the population at those levels. (JEL C79, D89)Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Swords or Plowshares? A Theory of the Security of Claims to PropertyJournal of Political Economy, 1995
- Evolution of Smartn PlayersGames and Economic Behavior, 1993
- Adaptation in gamesJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1993
- Learning the Optimal Strategy in a Zero-Sum GameEconometrica, 1974
- Games with randomly disturbed payoffs: A new rationale for mixed-strategy equilibrium pointsInternational Journal of Game Theory, 1973
- A Contribution to Von Neumann's Theory of GamesAnnals of Mathematics, 1945