Repeated The Game Theory Library- Repeated Games and the Logic of Cooperation

Play the Prisoner's Dilemma once, and betrayal wins every time. Play it forever - or even just without a known ending - and everything changes. This is the mathematics of why trust survives in a world with no referee.Repeated Games and the Logic of Cooperation picks up exactly where the unraveling proof left off: a single relaxed assumption, and cooperation becomes not just possible but fully rational. The book builds the folk theorem from the ground up - one of the most powerful results in all of game theory, and one of the most misunderstood - showing with a complete, hand-worked proof exactly how patient, self-interested players sustain cooperation with no contract, no court, and no external enforcement at all.Then the theory meets its toughest test: reality. Robert Axelrod's famous tit-for-tat, champion of two legendary computer tournaments, turns out to have a fatal flaw - a single accidental mistake can lock two well-intentioned players into permanent mutual retaliation. The book shows exactly how generous tit-for-tat, contrite tit-for-tat, and the self-correcting win-stay, lose-shift strategy were built to fix it.The back half of the book leaves the tournament behind entirely. Diamond wholesalers close million-dollar deals on a handshake. Japanese manufacturers build supply chains on relational trust that outperforms formal contracts. Sovereign nations repay debt with no international court able to force them to. Cattle ranchers in rural California settle disputes their own way, ignoring the formal law entirely. Every one of these real, well-documented cases runs on the same mathematics - patience, reputation, and the shadow of the future.The sixth volume in a ten-book series tracing game theory from its founding proofs to its modern applications, written for readers of economics, history, and strategy - no advanced mathematics required.