Reputation Without Commitment (original) (raw)

Reputation without commitment in finitely-repeated games

In the reputation literature, players have commitment types, which represent the possibility that they do not have standard payoffs, but instead are constrained to follow a particular plan. In this paper, we show that arbitrary commitment types can emerge from incomplete information about the stage payoffs. In particular, any finitely repeated game with commitment types is strategically equivalent to a standard finitely repeated game with incomplete information about the stage payoffs. Then classic reputation results can be achieved with uncertainty concerning only the stage payoffs.

Reputation in Perturbed Repeated Games

Journal of Economic Theory, 1996

The paper analyzes reputation effects in general perturbed repeated games with discounting. If there is some positive prior probability that one of the players is committed to play the same (pure or mixed) action in every period, then this provides a lower bound for her equilibrium payoff in all Nash equilibria. This bound is tight and independent of what other types have positive probability. It is generally lower than Fudenberg and Levine's (1989, 1992) bound for games with a long-run player facing a sequence of short-run opponents. The bound cannot be improved by considering types playing history dependent commitment strategies.

Reputation with long run players and imperfect observation

2008

Zusammenfassung: Previous work shows that reputation results may fail in repeated games between two long-run players with equal discount factors. We restrict attention to an infinitely repeated game where two players with equal discount factors play a simultaneous move stage game where actions of player 2 are imperfectly observed. The set of commitment types for player 1 is taken as any (countable) set of finite automata. In this context, for a restricted class of stage games, we provide a one sided reputation result.

Reputation and Perfection in Repeated Common Interest Games

Games and Economic Behavior, 1997

We consider a wide class of repeated common interest games perturbed with one-sided incomplete information: one player (the informed player) might be a commitment type playing the Pareto dominant action. As discounting, which is assumed to be symmetric, and the prior probability of the commitment type go to zero, it is shown that the informed player can be held close to her minmax payoff even when perfection is imposed on the equilibrium.

Reputations in Repeated Games

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper, prepared for the Handbook of Game Theory, volume 4 (Peyton Young and Shmuel Zamir, editors, Elsevier Press), surveys work on reputations in repeated games of incomplete information.

Reputations in Repeated Games, Second Version

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper, prepared for the Handbook of Game Theory, volume 4 (Peyton Young and Shmuel Zamir, editors, Elsevier Press), surveys work on reputations in repeated games of incomplete information.

Reputation in the long-run with imperfect monitoring

2011

We study an infinitely repeated game where two players with equal discount factors play a simultaneous-move stage game. Player one monitors the stage-game actions of player two imperfectly, while player two monitors the pure stage-game actions of player one perfectly. Player one's type is private information and he may be a “commitment type,” drawn from a countable set of commitment types, who is locked into playing a particular strategy.

Reputation in Dynamic Games

Journal of Economic Theory, 1996

We analyze reputation in a game between a large player and a continuum of long-lived small players in which state variables affect players' payoffs. The large player's type is private information. We give conditions under which in every Nash equilibrium a very patient large player will get almost the largest payoff consistent with the small players choosing a best response in a large finite truncation of the game. While our results apply to the time inconsistency problem of optimal government policy, we show that for the durable goods monopoly reputation may fail to improve the monopolist's payoff. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C73.

Commitment without Reputation: Renegotiation-Proof Contracts under Asymmetric Information∗

2015

This paper characterizes equilibrium outcomes of extensive form games with incomplete in-formation in which players sign renegotiable contracts with third parties. Our aim is to under-stand the extent to which third-party contracts can be used as commitment devices when it is im-possible to commit not to renegotiate them. We characterize renegotiation-proof contracts and strategies for extensive form games with incomplete information and apply our results to two-stage games. If contracts are observable, then the second mover obtains the best possible payoff given that she plays an incentive compatible and renegotiation-proof strategy and the first mover best responds. If contracts are unobservable, then any Bayesian Nash equilibrium outcome of the original game in which the second mover plays an incentive compatible and renegotiation-proof strategy can be supported. We apply our results to Stackelberg competition and show that renegotiation-proofness imposes a very simple restrictio...