title: Unbeatable Imitation
creator: Duersch, Peter
creator: Oechssler, Jörg
creator: Schipper, Burkhard C.
subject: ddc-330
subject: 330 Economics
description: We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule "imitate-the-best" can hardly be beaten by any other decision rule. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable and show that it can only be beaten by much in games that are of the rock-scissors-paper variety. Thus, in many interesting examples, like 2x2 games, Cournot duopoly, price competition, rent seeking, public goods games, common pool resource games, minimum effort coordination games, arms race, search, bargaining, etc., imitation cannot be beaten by much even by a very clever opponent.
date: 2010
type: Working paper
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaper
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10544/1/duersch_2010_dp499.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00010544
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-105444
identifier:   Duersch, Peter ; Oechssler, Jörg ; Schipper, Burkhard C.  (2010) Unbeatable Imitation.  [Working paper]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10544/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng