| 简介： | Social interaction with colleagues is an important job attribute in the workplace.
A novel area of research in economics is whether socializing in the workplace can
foster altruistic behavior that helps to resolve the free-rider problem. This paper
analyzes a model in which players become altruistic in workplace settings framed
as general prisoner's dilemma. Such endogenous altruism has signi cant empirical
relevance. A complete characterization of the equilibrium degrees, the extents to
which players wish to be altruistic towards their counterparts, of altruism promoting
cooperation is established. The result implies that promoting cooperation through
rational altruism is robust with respect to asymmetries. Furthermore, there exists a
positive correlation between the range of equilibrium degrees of altruism promoting
cooperation and two known indices of cooperation in prisoner's dilemma. As a by
product, this paper provides a rationale for these indices of cooperation.
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