COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281

COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1094

Dumb Bugs and Bright Noncooperative Players:
Games, Context and Behavior

Thomas Quint, Martin Shubik, and Dicky Yan

February 1995

Consider a repeated bimatrix game. We define "bugs" as players whose "strategy" is to react myopically to whatever the opponent did on the previous iteration. We believe that in some contexts this is a more realistic model of behavior than the standard "supremely rational" noncooperative game player.

We consider possible outcome paths that can occur as the result of bugs playing a game. We also compare how bugs fare over a suitable "universe of games," as compared with standard "Nash" players and "maximin" players.