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Rationality and Society
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Opportunism, Trust and Cooperation

A Game Theoretic Approach With Heterogeneous Agents

Marie-Laure Cabon-Dhersin

Social Sciences Department at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France, cabon{at}grid.ensam.estp.fr

Shyama V. Ramani

INRA-ESR, Paris, France , ramani{at}ivry.inra.fr

Even when there is a potential danger of opportunism, economic agents often initiate contracts or engage in trust. Considering a world with two types of agents, opportunists and non-opportunists, interacting under incomplete information, this article develops a simple two-stage game theoretic model to show how trust and cooperation can emerge in a one-shot interaction, even in the absence of a supporting incentive mechanism. Two classic paradigms are considered: the prisoner's dilemma and the game of chicken. In the context of the prisoner's dilemma, trust depends on the exogenous probability of having a non-opportunist partner, while in the game of chicken trust is purely a function of the payoffs. Contrary to intuition, a high ratio of non-opportunistic agents in the population does not favor contract initiation in the game of chicken and a strong presence of opportunists does not act as an impediment to respecting commitments.

Key Words: non-cooperative games • incomplete information • trust • cooperation

Rationality and Society, Vol. 19, No. 2, 203-228 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1043463107077391
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