580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
Figure 1 – uploaded by Steven Pinker
Table 1 Unfortunately, he doesn’t know whether the officer is corrupt and will accept the bribe or is honest and will ar- rest him for attempting to bribe an officer. The game-theoretic conundrum where one actor does not know the values of the other has been explored by Thomas Schelling, who calls it the Identification Problem (9). The payoffs are as follows: If the driver doesn’t try to bribe the officer (first row), either way he gets a ticket; if he does offer the bribe (second row), the stakes are much higher either way: going free with just the cost of the bribe if he is facing a dishonest cop, or an arrest for bribery if he is facing an hon- est one.
Related Figures (3)
