Marriage and Other Prisoner's Dilemmas Available to Purchase

The “prisoner dilemma” is distinguished for its characterization of the interaction engaged in by parties whose “fates are interdependent,” but whose “self‐interests are not perfectly consonant,” to use the phrasing of Stevel Salop (1986). Economists have devoted an extensive literature to situations that are in essence prisoner's dilemmas, such as competition in oligopolies. However, what is striking about the prisoner's dilemma is not so much its relevance to particular market structures as its pervasiveness in many areas of life. As economists have broadened the scope of their studies to include interactions beyond the marketplace, they have frequently alluded to the existence of the prisoner's dilemma. Nonetheless, scholars have not yet fully explored the connections between the prisoner's dilemma, the standard microeconomic model of utility maximization, and the social institutions that attempt to secure Pareto efficient outcomes. Using marriage as its primary example, this paper examines the conditions and institutions that made relationships work to facilitate cooperation, avoiding the typical outcome of a situation characterized by the prisoner's dilemma.