Paper's abstract

Pierre Livet, Obligation and Game Theory
Is the game theory able to tell which are the contracts to whose obligations it is rational to comply? Anyway it cannot justify collaborations which appear to us as fruitful even if risky (the dilemma of the prisoner, the dilemma of public goods). It is because this theory intends to reason by considering the moves of other players as data, whereas they are nothing but suppositions, which may depend on other suppositions on the moves of the other players. When explaining this type of conditional, interconnected reasoning, one comes quite close to contract. They then play, on the background of the uncertainty inbred into these intertwined hypothesis, the role of signaling the type of interaction chosen by the partners.

Key Words : obligation, game theory, contract
t. 44, 2000 : p. 163-178

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