"An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind": Cooperation and Accounting Systems

Abstract

Using computer simulations that permit degrees of cooperation and introduce "noise" into the environment, I explore the benefits of strategies in which actors use different accounting systems to track ongoing exchanges. By relaxing some stringent assumptions of past work, I chart the conditions under which cooperation may emerge when actors can show degrees of cooperation and when actors' moves are misperceived. Results provide evidence that strategies employing a relaxed accounting system have many advantages.