Roenblog:

But another game, the “stag hunt,” languishes in relative and undeserved obscurity. In the stag hunt, two hunters must each decide whether to hunt the stag together or hunt rabbits alone. Half a stag is better than a brace of rabbits, but the stag will only be brought down with a combined effort. Rabbits, on the other hand, can be hunted by an individual without any trouble.

There are two rational outcomes to the stag hunt: Either both hunters hunt the stag as a team, or each hunts rabbits by himself. Each would prefer to cooperate in hunting the stag, but if the other player’s motives or actions are uncertain, the rabbit hunt is a risk-free alternative.

Northern Rock’s customers have decided to hunt rabbits. If they had confidence that other depositors would stay with the bank, there’s not much doubt that their money would be safe. When they lost that confidence, the stag hunt was abandoned. And despite all the talk about panic, it was abandoned for perfectly sensible reasons.

The stag hunt is inspired by an anecdote originating with Jean Jacques Rousseau about a deer hunter abandoning his post to chase a hare. Yet it is more than an offbeat parable about cooperation. In the hands of economists, it becomes a mathematical object that can be pulled apart and tested to see how it works. One worrying outcome of that research is the discovery that it is very hard to move from the low-trust situation, in which each hunter chases his own rabbits, to the more trusting situation, in which both team up to bring down the stag. Any move to the high-trust equilibrium is going to require its own, possibly costly, attempt at coordination.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that trust is difficult to regain once lost.