Cheating on Your Spouse: A Game-Theoretic Analysis
Theoretical Economics Letters, Vol. 7, pp. 79-85, 2017
Posted: 25 Jan 2017
There are 2 versions of this paper
Cheating on Your Spouse: A Game-Theoretic Analysis
Date Written: January 24, 2017
Abstract
In this note we analyze a game of marital infidelity. The husband can either be faithful to or cheat on his wife. The wife can either monitor or not monitor her husband. We first determine the best response correspondences of the two players. Second, we explain why there is no pure-strategy Nash equilibrium in the game under study. Third, we show that there exists a unique mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium in the game. Finally, we demonstrate the nexus between our marital infidelity game and the prominent Matching Pennies game.
Keywords: Cheating; Faithfulness; Monitoring; Mixed-Strategy; Static Game
JEL Classification: J12; D81; C72
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation