The prisoner's dilemma is a game used by researchers to model and investigate how people decide to cooperate—or not. Imagine that Prisoner A and Prisoner B are charged with a crime and detained ...

The tariff pause is also a signal—a visible action meant to convey intent. Signaling theory suggests that rational players use costly moves to prove they are serious. Trump’s split strategy (carrots ...

The absence of a meaningfully coordinated defense might have been predicted from the “prisoner’s dilemma,” a classic game-theory framework that reveals why rational actors often fail to ...