Conformity, correlation and equity∗

Coordination between agents can be modelled using correlated equilibrium and a ‘device’ allocating roles to players. That coordination takes place within a social context suggests properties that one may expect of a correlated equilibrium. In this paper, given a partition of the player set into (social) groups, we demonstrate the existence of an approximate correlated equilibrium satisfying a within group anonymity property and a group independence property. Within group anonymity assures ‘fairness’ and equality within groups while group independence rules out correlation of actions between groups. ∗This paper is a major revision of Cartwright and Wooders (2003a). The main results of that paper were presented at the the 2002 General Equilibrium Conference held in Athens in May 2002 and at Northwestern University in August 2002. We thank the participants for their interest and comments.