Econometrica: Nov, 1995, Volume 63, Issue 6

Cooperation and Effective Computability

https://doi.org/0012-9682(199511)63:6<1337:CAEC>2.0.CO;2-8
p. 1337-1369

Hamid Sabourian, Luca Anderlini

A common interest game is a game in which there exists a unique pair of payoffs which strictly Pareto-dominates all other payoffs. We consider the undiscounted repeated game obtained by the infinite repetition of such a two-player stage game. We show that if supergame strategies are restricted to be computable within Church's thesis, the only pair of payoffs which survives any computable tremble with sufficiently large support is the Pareto-efficient pair. The result is driven by the ability of the players to use the early stages of the game to communicate their intention to play cooperatively in the future.