TITLE:
Cheating on Your Spouse: A Game-Theoretic Analysis
AUTHORS:
Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Hamid Beladi
KEYWORDS:
Cheating, Faithfulness, Monitoring, Mixed-Strategy, Static Game
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.7 No.1,
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.