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The Law of Damages and the Prisoners' Dilemma: A Comment on ‘Pure and Utilitarian Prisoners' Dilemmas’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Hamish Stewart
Hamish Stewart
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Kuhn and Moresi (1995) (henceforth, K&M) have proposed a useful taxonomy for classifying prisoners' dilemmas (henceforth, PDs). This comment is concerned with K&M's observation that legal penalties for defection can transform PDs into cooperative games, and their argument that the role of the law may vary depending on how the PD is classified by their taxonomy. The purpose of this note is to support K&M's analysis by demonstrating that the law of damages, as understood by economic analysis, already performs the function that K&M assign to legal penalties for defection.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , October 1997 , pp. 231 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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