Question Details

I. COOPERATION BASICS
1. You should understand the one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). Specifically, you should understand the payoffs for cooperation and defection (T, R, P, S) and what it means to say that T > R > P > S. You should understand why each player has a dominant strategy to defect and what this implies about the equilibrium of a one-shot game.
2. What does it mean to say the one-shot PD outcome is Pareto-suboptimal? Why is this considered bad?
3. We know cooperation does not occur in a one-shot PD. Why is cooperation possible in an iterated PD? What conditions must be met to induce cooperation?
4. Why is the shadow of the future important for cooperation?
5. Why is TIT-FOR-TAT an effective strategy for promoting cooperation? Be prepared for questions of the following type:
The US and European Union (EU) would both like access to each other’s markets; hence they would each like the other to liberalize trade. However, each actor also wishes to protect its own market. Both actors therefore have Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) incentives, as shown in the matrix below. Numbers in the cells represent payoffs: as usual, the row player’s payoffs are shown first, followed by the column player’s.
  
 
 EU
Liberalize
Protect
US
Liberalize
4,4
1,5
Protect
5,1
 
2,2
6. What will be the outcome of a one-shot PD?
7. Suppose the US and EU are playing an iterated PD. The EU is employing a Grim Trigger strategy—that is, it will cooperate as long as the US cooperates, but it will punish a US defection by defecting forever after—and the US knows this. If the US has a discount parameter of .2, will it cooperate (liberalize) or defect (protect)? How do you know?
8. Suppose everything is the same as in question 7 except that the US now has a discount parameter of .5. Will the US cooperate or defect? How do you know?
9. Does the change in the discount parameter affect the outcome of the iterated game? Why or why not?
II. INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS / TRADE / CLIMATE CHANGE
10. How might international institutions (IIs) facilitate cooperation in an anarchic world? Be specific about the functions IIs serve and how these support cooperation.
11. In class, we discussed the WTO and the Iran nuclear deal as examples of what IIs do. You should be familiar with these examples and how they relate to your answer to the previous question.
12. Why do governments generally have PD preferences regarding trade policy?
13. Why do governments generally have PD preferences regarding climate change policy?
14. Why has cooperation on climate change been harder to achieve than cooperation on trade? What characteristics of each issue-area facilitate or hinder cooperation?
15. What is the principal cause of contemporary climate change? What are some likely consequences?
16. What is the simplest policy solution to the problem of climate change? How would this address the problem?The answers should be mainly based on the textbook.