Social Norms and Cooperation in the Matching Game: A Review

Some social scientists argue that the widespread of cooperation within societies is the fact that modern economics theory fails to capture. Fukuyama, for example, argues that economics fails to take into account cultural factors affecting individual behaviors (Fukuyama 1995). Trust, as he argued, is culturally embedded in societies and social virtue promoting prosperity in some nations. Yet, studies on cooperative behaviors by game theorists lay theoretical groundwork arguing that cooperation can be sustained within self-interested individuals. This paper is, mainly, an attempt to review cooperative behavior under the random matching game, particularly a seminal work by Kandori. This paper will discuss basic properties of the model in detail.