Beyond the Prisoner's Dilemma: Coordination, Game Theory, and the Law

Abstract

Game theory contains many tools and insights beyond the Prisoners' Dilemma, too many to be the subject of an essay.No doubt the formal modelers would point out the greater realism of using games with continuous rather than discrete strategies, 3 sequential rather than simultaneous moves, 4 asymmetric information, 5 as well as models of evolutionary emergence of equilibrium.6 Most contemporary game theory is not about games with pre-existing names like the Prisoners' Dilemma or the alternatives I discuss below, but concerns games the modeler constructs to fit the situation being studied.Yet this is the kind of complaint that Baird, Gertner, and Picker raised previously.I want to take a different, more practical path in criticizing the law professor's use of game theory, one that borrows from another applied field, political science.That work demonstrates that in situations just as basic as the Prisoners' Dilemma -with two players, two discrete strategies, complete information, and simultaneous moves -there is a world of value in games other than the Prisoners' Dilemma.7 I focus on three such games, all involving problems of "coordination" 8 that do not arise in the Prisoners' Dilemma, and all having great value for legal theory.Why would legal scholars focus on the Prisoners' Dilemma to the point where it obscures other insights of game theory?What is the game's allure?Two features that narrow the games' application also make it tempting to a legal scholar.When played just once, the Prisoners' Dilemma is one of the few games with a single "equilibrium."An equilibrium is central to game theory; it is an outcome where each 3 See, e.g.,

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