AN ESS-ANALYSIS FOR ENSEMBLES OF PRISONERS-DILEMMA STRATEGIES

The ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy) concept of Maynard Smith can be applied in its weak form to ensembles of competing PD ("Prisoner's Dilemma") strategies memorizing two to three of one's own and one's opponent's moves. The format of our study is:o(1)games have very long duration;(2)Taylor-Jonker dynamics applies;(3)Effects of finite population size can be ignored. It is shown that in the case R>(T + S)/2 a set of strategies can be singled out which do not lose against any other strategy while co-operating with themselves. Such a set is uninvadable by other PD strategies if it constitutes more than half of the total population. © 1990 Academic Press Limited.