Uniqueness in infinitely repeated decision problems
Résumé
Dynamic decision-making without commitment is usually modelled as a game between the current and future selves of the decision maker. It has been observed that if the time-horizon is infinite, then such games may have multiple subgame-perfect equilibrium solutions. We provide a sufficient condition for uniqueness in a class of such games, namely infinitely repeated decision problems with discounting. The condition is two-fold: the range of possible utility levels in the decision problem should be bounded from below, and the discount factor between successive periods should be non-decreasing over time, a condition met by exponential, quasi-exponential and hyperbolic discounting.