work / games / proposers-dilemma
The Proposer's Dilemma
An interactive game-theory simulation of sequential bargaining, where fairness and rational self-interest collide round after round.
- rounds
- multi
- repeated sequential play
- roles
- 2
- proposer + responder
- theory
- Nash / BI
- equilibrium concepts
system architecture / interactive
The game behind the game
In the classic proposer-responder setup, one player proposes how to split a resource and the other accepts or rejects; rejection leaves both with nothing. Pure rationality says a responder should accept any nonzero offer, so backward induction predicts the proposer offers the minimum. Real humans reject unfair splits out of spite, and that tension between the Nash equilibrium and observed fairness is one of behavioral economics' most studied results.
What I built
An interactive simulation where players take both roles across multiple rounds: propose splits, respond to offers, and watch a scoring system track how strategies perform over time. Visual feedback makes the payoff consequences legible round by round, so the theory stops being abstract: you feel the pull between maximizing your own take and making offers the other side will actually accept.
Why it is interesting to build
Encoding a game-theory experiment forces precision about the rules: what information each player sees, when decisions lock in, and how repeated play changes incentives compared to the one-shot game. Repeated rounds shift optimal behavior toward fairness because reputation starts to matter, and the simulation makes that emergent shift observable in the score trajectories rather than asserting it.
stack