The likelihood of inefficiency, a prisoner's dilemma and suboptimality in games of binary voluntary provision of public goods

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shmuel Nitzan
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Voluntary Provision

Emergence of Cooperation in Public Goods Problems

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Dalibor Roháč
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Public Goods Provision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Weakest Link ◽  
Game Of Chicken ◽  
Emergence Of Cooperation ◽  
Assurance Game ◽  
The Difference

Abstract In this paper, we discuss several issues related to public goods provision. Unlike many Austrians, we do not think that the concept of public goods - or of collective action - is an inherently flawed idea, even though we reject the alleged welfare implications of public goods theory, as proposed by orthodox public finance literature. We then argue that the structure of a generic public goods problem is more a game of chicken or an assurance game than a prisoner's dilemma and that this has important implications with regard to the plausibility of cooperative outcomes. Namely, when the public goods problem has the weakest-link structure and can be represented as an assurance game, then the cooperative outcome will be self-enforcing. In many cases, the public goods problems can be transformed into weakest-link games or different mechanisms can be found to ensure cooperation. We also discuss the difference between a public goods problem and collusion. We assert that, unlike public goods problems, collusive agreements have the structure of a prisoner's dilemma. Overall, our paper suggests that there are reasons to be optimistic about stability and efficiency of stateless societal orders.

The Insoluble Problem of the Social Contract

Dialogue ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Braybrooke
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Traditional Problem ◽  
The Social

The traditional problem of the social contract defies solution. Agents with the motivations traditionally assumed would not in the circumstances traditionally assumed voluntarily arrive at a contract or voluntarily keep it up, as we can now understand, more clearly than our illustrious predecessors, by treating the problem in terms not available to them: the terms of Prisoner's Dilemma and of the theory of public goods.

scholarly journals Nonlinear trade-offs allow the cooperation game to evolve from Prisoner's Dilemma to Snowdrift

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1854) ◽  
pp. 20170228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Chao ◽  
Santiago F. Elena
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Gene Products ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Defective Interfering Particles ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
High Level

The existence of cooperation, or the production of public goods, is an evolutionary problem. Cooperation is not favoured because the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game drives cooperators to extinction. We have re-analysed this problem by using RNA viruses to motivate a model for the evolution of cooperation. Gene products are the public goods and group size is the number of virions co-infecting the same host cell. Our results show that if the trade-off between replication and production of gene products is linear, PD is observed. However, if the trade-off is nonlinear, the viruses evolve into separate lineages of ultra-defectors and ultra-cooperators as group size is increased. The nonlinearity was justified by the existence of real viral ultra-defectors, known as defective interfering particles, which gain a nonlinear advantage by being smaller. The evolution of ultra-defectors and ultra-cooperators creates the Snowdrift game, which promotes high-level production of public goods.

Chickens, Whales, and Lumpy Goods: Alternative Models of Public-Goods Provision

1982 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Taylor ◽  
Hugh Ward
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Simple Games ◽  
Public Goods Provision ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma Game ◽  
Alternative Models ◽  
Environmental Public Goods ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma Game

The game-theoretic literature on the problem of the provision of public goods has concentrated almost exclusively on one model—the Prisoner's Dilemma game. Several other simple games may be more applicable in certain situations. In particular, the game structure known as Chicken seems to provide a better description of an important sub-class of games where the good is lumpy rather than continuously divisible. Many environmental public goods belong to this category. A distinct paradox of public-goods provision occurs within games of Chicken.

scholarly journals National parochialism is ubiquitous across 42 nations around the world

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Romano ◽  
Matthias Sutter ◽  
James H. Liu ◽  
Toshio Yamagishi ◽  
Daniel Balliet
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Similar Degree ◽  
Global Public Goods ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
Ingroup Outgroup

AbstractCooperation within and across borders is of paramount importance for the provision of public goods. Parochialism – the tendency to cooperate more with ingroup than outgroup members – limits contributions to global public goods. National parochialism (i.e., greater cooperation among members of the same nation) could vary across nations and has been hypothesized to be associated with rule of law, exposure to world religions, relational mobility and pathogen stress. We conduct an experiment in participants from 42 nations (N = 18,411), and observe cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma with ingroup, outgroup, and unidentified partners. We observe that national parochialism is a ubiquitous phenomenon: it is present to a similar degree across the nations studied here, is independent of cultural distance, and occurs both when decisions are private or public. These findings inform existing theories of parochialism and suggest it may be an obstacle to the provision of global public goods.

scholarly journals Evolutionary games and population dynamics: maintenance of cooperation in public goods games

2006 ◽  
Vol 273 (1600) ◽  
pp. 2565-2571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Hauert ◽  
Miranda Holmes ◽  
Michael Doebeli
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Replicator Dynamics ◽  
Evolutionary Game ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Evolutionary Games ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Ecological Dynamics ◽  
Public Goods Games

The emergence and abundance of cooperation in nature poses a tenacious and challenging puzzle to evolutionary biology. Cooperative behaviour seems to contradict Darwinian evolution because altruistic individuals increase the fitness of other members of the population at a cost to themselves. Thus, in the absence of supporting mechanisms, cooperation should decrease and vanish, as predicted by classical models for cooperation in evolutionary game theory, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and public goods games. Traditional approaches to studying the problem of cooperation assume constant population sizes and thus neglect the ecology of the interacting individuals. Here, we incorporate ecological dynamics into evolutionary games and reveal a new mechanism for maintaining cooperation. In public goods games, cooperation can gain a foothold if the population density depends on the average population payoff. Decreasing population densities, due to defection leading to small payoffs, results in smaller interaction group sizes in which cooperation can be favoured. This feedback between ecological dynamics and game dynamics can generate stable coexistence of cooperators and defectors in public goods games. However, this mechanism fails for pairwise Prisoner's Dilemma interactions and the population is driven to extinction. Our model represents natural extension of replicator dynamics to populations of varying densities.

scholarly journals Non-linear tradeoffs allow the cooperation game to evolve from Prisoner’s Dilemma to Snow Drift

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Chao ◽  
Santiago F. Elena
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Gene Products ◽  
The Public ◽  
Snow Drift ◽  
High Level ◽  
Level Production

The existence of cooperation, or the production of public goods, is an evolutionary problem. Cooperation is not favored because the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game drives cooperators to extinction. We have re-analyzed this problem by using RNA viruses to motivate a model for the evolution of cooperation. Gene products are the public goods and group size is the number of virions co-infecting the same host cell. Our results show that if the tradeoff between replication and production of gene products is linear, PD is observed. However, if the tradeoff is nonlinear, the viruses evolve into separate lineages of ultra-defectors and ultra-cooperators as group size is increased. The nonlinearity was justified by the existence of real viral ultra-defectors, known as defective interfering (DI) particles, which gain a nonlinear advantage by being smaller. The evolution of ultra-defectors and ultra-cooperators creates the Snow Drift game, which promotes high-level production of public goods.

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