scholarly journals Chris Cannings: A Life in Games

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-617
Author(s):  
D. Timothy Bishop ◽  
Mark Broom ◽  
Richard Southwell

AbstractChris Cannings was one of the pioneers of evolutionary game theory. His early work was inspired by the formulations of John Maynard Smith, Geoff Parker and Geoff Price; Chris recognized the need for a strong mathematical foundation both to validate stated results and to give a basis for extensions of the models. He was responsible for fundamental results on matrix games, as well as much of the theory of the important war of attrition game, patterns of evolutionarily stable strategies, multiplayer games and games on networks. In this paper we describe his work, key insights and their influence on research by others in this increasingly important field. Chris made substantial contributions to other areas such as population genetics and segregation analysis, but it was to games that he always returned. This review is written by three of his students from different stages of his career.

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (04) ◽  
pp. 1950005
Author(s):  
Elvio Accinelli ◽  
Filipe Martins ◽  
Jorge Oviedo

In this paper, we study the concept of Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESSs) for symmetric games with [Formula: see text] players. The main properties of these games and strategies are analyzed and several examples are provided. We relate the concept of ESS with previous literature and provide a proof of finiteness of ESS in the context of symmetric games with [Formula: see text] players. We show that unlike the case of [Formula: see text], when there are more than two populations an ESS does not have a uniform invasion barrier, or equivalently, it is not equivalent to the strategy performing better against all strategies in a neighborhood. We also construct the extended replicator dynamics for these games and we study an application to a model of strategic planning of investment.


1996 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sverrir Olafsson

The efficient utilization of resources is an issue of essential importance in modern network management. The emergence of increasingly complicated and continuously changing network services requires softer and fuzzier methods in network management. In this paper we demonstrate how evolutionary game theory can be used for an efficient allocation of service requirements onto an ensemble of heterogeneous network components. By incorporating differentiated pricing structures into a system utility function, network agents are encouraged to increase their usage of those components that are presently badly utilized. It is demonstrated how this approach can enhance network utilization significantly. Some new results regarding evolutionarily stable strategies in nonlinear evolutionary games are also reported.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (108) ◽  
pp. 20150044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dervis C. Vural ◽  
Alexander Isakov ◽  
L. Mahadevan

Starting with Darwin, biologists have asked how populations evolve from a low fitness state that is evolutionarily stable to a high fitness state that is not. Specifically of interest is the emergence of cooperation and multicellularity where the fitness of individuals often appears in conflict with that of the population. Theories of social evolution and evolutionary game theory have produced a number of fruitful results employing two-state two-body frameworks. In this study, we depart from this tradition and instead consider a multi-player, multi-state evolutionary game, in which the fitness of an agent is determined by its relationship to an arbitrary number of other agents. We show that populations organize themselves in one of four distinct phases of interdependence depending on one parameter, selection strength. Some of these phases involve the formation of specialized large-scale structures. We then describe how the evolution of independence can be manipulated through various external perturbations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 779-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong He ◽  
Peng He ◽  
Feifei Xu ◽  
Chunming (Victor) Shi

In this article, we investigate two competitive tour operators (TOs) who choose between traditional tourism strategy (strategy T) and green tourism innovation strategy (strategy G). Our article attempts to address the following important issues using evolutionary game models: when would TOs facing environment-friendly tourists adopt the strategy G? How do TOs set product prices under different strategy combinations? How can the government effectively motivate TOs to pursue green tourism? Our research results show that a green tourism innovation pioneer could monopolize the market under certain conditions. Furthermore, when the environmental preference of tourists is sufficiently low, no TOs would adopt the strategy G; when it is moderate, only the TO with cost advantage (stronger TO) would adopt the strategy G; when it is sufficiently high, both TOs would select the strategy G. Our research also demonstrates that the stronger TO implements the strategy G mostly independent of the rival’s decisions, but the opposite is true for the TO with cost disadvantage (weaker TO). We further investigate potential government subsidies that can motivate TOs to carry out green tourism simultaneously. Our results suggest that to be more effective, the government first offer the green subsidy to highly competitive tourism locations and/or more innovative TOs.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxun Zhou ◽  
Rahman Mohammad Mafizur ◽  
Khanam Rasheda ◽  
Brad R. Taylor

Abstract Purpose – Based on the fact that punishment and subsidy mechanisms affect the anti-epidemic incentives of major participants in a society, the issue of this paper is how the penalty and subsidy mechanisms affect the decisions of governments, businesses, and consumers during Corona Virus Disease 2019. The goal of this paper is to understand strategic selections from governments, enterprises, and consumers to maximize their respective utility during Corona Virus Disease 2019, and the impact of penalty and subsidy mechanism on the decisions of governments, businesses, and consumers.Design/Methodology/approach - This paper proposes a tripartite evolutionary game theory, involving governments, businesses, and consumers, to firstly analyze the evolutionary stable strategies and to secondly analyze the impact of penalty and subsidy mechanism on their strategy selection during Corona Virus Disease 2019. Thirdly, this paper uses numerical analysis to simulate the strategy formation process of governments, enterprises, and consumers in Japan and India based on their different penalty and subsidy mechanism.Findings – This paper suggests that there are four evolutionarily stable strategies corresponding to the actual anti-epidemic situations of different countries in reality. We find that different subsidy and penalty mechanisms lead to different evolutionary stable strategies. If governments, enterprises, and consumers fighting the pandemic together, the government need to set a low subsidy mechanism and a high penalty mechanism.Originality/value - There are some limitations in the literature, such as long term strategies, rational hypothesis, and convergence path analysis in higher dimensional evolutionary game theory. This paper fills the gap and extends the theory of COVID-19 management theory. Firstly, this paper has important practical significance. This paper finds out the long-term equilibrium strategies of governments, businesses, and consumers under Corona Virus Disease 2019, which can provide an important theoretical and decision-making basis for pandemic prevention and control. Secondly, our paper extends the analytical paradigm of the tripartite evolutionary game theory. We extend the analysis of the dynamic process from the initial point to the convergence point and make a theoretical contribution to the development of high-dimensional evolutionary game theory.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haigh

Suppose the n × n matrix A gives the payoffs for some evolutionary game, and its entries are the values of independent, identically distributed, continuous random variables. The distribution of the pattern of evolutionarily stable strategies for A will depend, if n ≧ 3, on this underlying distribution. A fairly complete picture for n = 3 is found, and some results are obtained for n ≧ 4.


Author(s):  
Guang Zhu ◽  
Gaozhi Pan ◽  
Weiwei Zhang

With the rapid development of global industry and economy, excessive carbon dioxide emission has emerged as a critical issue in both developed and developing countries. Using an evolutionary game framework in which game players can adjust their strategies constantly, this paper investigates how to optimize the strategy of low carbon investment for suppliers and manufacturers in supply chains, and discuss the impacts of various factors on evolutionarily stable strategies. Additionally, we examine an incentive mechanism based on governmental subsidies to eliminate free riding and motivate co-investment. Furthermore, a case study and numerical examples are provided for illustration and simulation purposes, leading to several countermeasures and suggestions. Our analytical results show that the strategic choice of low carbon investment is correlated with profit growth coefficients, investment costs and profits from free riding. Investment costs have more significant impacts than other factors on evolutionarily stable strategies, while profit growth coefficients are more important at initial stages in the evolutionary process. The incentive mechanism based on governmental subsidies is an effective solution to motivate co-investment, and governments should take some measures to improve the assess accuracy and supervisory efficiency of investment strategy.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 233-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haigh

Suppose the n × n matrix A gives the payoffs for some evolutionary game, and its entries are the values of independent, identically distributed, continuous random variables. The distribution of the pattern of evolutionarily stable strategies for A will depend, if n ≧ 3, on this underlying distribution. A fairly complete picture for n = 3 is found, and some results are obtained for n ≧ 4.


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