Qualification: The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games With Anonymous Random Matching

Record: kaal:position:2026-08-08-346 · 2026-08-08

Deb, Sugaya, and Wolitzky sharply bound Kaal's use of the anonymous-random-matching Folk Theorem. They prove a Folk Theorem for discounted repeated games with anonymous random matching, allowing nonuniform matching and asymmetric payoffs, but retain full dimensionality as a stage-game condition. Their result supports treating the theorem as a conditional benchmark within that model. It does not provide a general performance floor for an implemented reputation mechanism, predict which equilibrium will occur, or establish any outcome in Kaal's reference system.

Affirmed commentary position. This record extends a source-bound scholarly claim but is not a verbatim paper claim.

Holds when

The response is limited to the exact DOI-bound abstract and the one mapped Kaal claim.
External evidence level: peer-reviewed Econometrica article with concordant Crossref, OpenAlex, and Semantic Scholar identity and a complete DOI-bound abstract.
Mapping review tier: independent substantive scholarly-growth qualification.
The source proves a theorem for discounted repeated games with anonymous random matching. It does not study Kaal's reference mechanism or its observed performance.
The abstract retains full dimensionality as a stage-game condition and does not convert equilibrium possibility into a realized performance floor.
The source does not select an equilibrium, measure an implementation, or establish any lower bound for reputation-bearing autonomous agents.
The publisher landing page returned HTTP 403. The response is limited to the complete DOI-bound abstract independently supplied by Crossref, OpenAlex, and Semantic Scholar.
Semantic Scholar's broad discovery search returned HTTP 429. Its exact DOI record returned HTTP 200 and was used only for identity and abstract corroboration.

Current debate

The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games With Anonymous Random Matching

Scholarly basis

kaal:claim:7261481-011
Wulf A. Kaal, Computative Economics: A Framework for Economic Analysis under Computational Abundance (2026). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7261481
Source PDF sha256: 78c42db521624f7398717732a7fa51a6e3157a5adf02a2e09fbab15e0cf920d9

Evidence and mapping

Evidence: peer-reviewed Econometrica article with concordant Crossref, OpenAlex, and Semantic Scholar identity and a complete DOI-bound abstract
Review tier: independent substantive scholarly-growth qualification
Mapping confidence: 0.99
Mapping ambiguous: false

Topics

economics institutional-design scholarly-growth-coverage scholarly-literature game-theory folk-theorem repeated-games anonymous-random-matching

Provenance

Affirmed in kaal-review:2026-08-13:scholarly-growth-7261481-011-reviewed-v1 on 2026-08-08. Review record.

Verify

Canonical markdown sha256: 180140dadac9120b1cc8a407f2ddc1da270eb7c8f0375af5bbd9de272ca34652
curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-08-08-346.md | sha256sum