scholarly journals Vote Buying, Village Elections, and Authoritarian Rule in Rural China: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroki Takeuchi
Keyword(s):  
Rural China ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Democratic Institution ◽  
Village Elections ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Game Theoretic

Village elections are a democratic institution in one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes in the world. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has promoted village elections over the past twenty years, but not elections at higher levels. I present a game-theoretic model in which candidates would engage in vote buying when competing in a small electorate but not when competing in a larger electorate. The model's equilibrium outcome implies that the logic of China's introduction of village elections inherently limits this democratic reform to the grassroots level. Elections for higher levels of government would be dangerous to the regime because they would lead candidates to create substantive policy platforms and political organizations. Thus, rather than being an experiment that has failed to lead to further reforms, village democracy is self-limiting by design.

Hobbes's State of Nature: A Modern Bayesian Game-Theoretic Analysis

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
HUN CHUNG
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Bayesian Game ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Game Theoretic Model

ABSTRACT:Hobbes's own justification for the existence of governments relies on the assumption that without a government our lives in the state of nature would result in a state of war of every man against every man. Many contemporary scholars have tried to explain why universal war is unavoidable in Hobbes's state of nature by utilizing modern game theory. However, most game-theoretic models that have been presented so far do not accurately capture what Hobbes deems to be the primary cause of conflict in the state of nature—namely, uncertainty, rather than people's egoistic psychology. Therefore, I claim that any game-theoretic model that does not incorporate uncertainty into the picture is the wrong model. In this paper, I use Bayesian game theory to show how universal conflict can break out in the state of nature—even when the majority of the population would strictly prefer to cooperate and seek peace with other people—due to uncertainty about what type of person the other player is. Along the way, I show that the valuation of one's own life is one of the central mechanisms that drives Hobbes's pessimistic conclusion.

scholarly journals A game theoretic analysis of resource mining in blockchain

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 2035-2046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajani Singh ◽  
Ashutosh Dhar Dwivedi ◽  
Gautam Srivastava ◽  
Agnieszka Wiszniewska-Matyszkiel ◽  
Xiaochun Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Nash Equilibrium ◽  
Dynamic Game ◽  
Social Optimum ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Mining System ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Game Theoretic Model ◽  
Dynamic Game Model

Abstract Blockchain and cryptocurrency are a hot topic in today’s digital world. In this paper, we create a game theoretic model in continuous time. We consider a dynamic game model of the bitcoin market, where miners or players use mining systems to mine bitcoin by investing electricity into the mining system. Although this work is motivated by BTC, the work presented can be applicable to other mining systems similar to BTC. We propose three concepts of dynamic game theoretic solutions to the model: Social optimum, Nash equilibrium and myopic Nash equilibrium. Using the model that a player represents a single “miner” or a “mining pool”, we develop novel and interesting results for the cryptocurrency world.

scholarly journals When Does Mutualism Offer a Competitive Advantage? A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Host-Host Competition in Mutualism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdel H Halloway ◽  
Katy D Heath ◽  
Gordon G McNickle
Keyword(s):  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Evolutionary Game ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Neighborhood Size ◽  
Net Benefit ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Local Neighborhood ◽  
Specific Direction ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
The Cost

Questions: Can resource-resource trade mutualism offer a competitive advantage to plants? If so, what are the conditions that give mutualism an advantage especially with regard to the size of the neighborhood? Hypothesis: We hypothesized that mutualism could offer a competitive advantage if the benefits outweighed the costs. We also hypothesized that this competitive advantage could lead to coexistence between mutualist and non-mutualist strategies within the same population. We also hypothesize that local neighborhood size (the number of competitors at a given moment) would change this response, though the specific direction of change was unclear to us. Method: We created an evolutionary game theoretic model in which a plant could either be a mutualist or non-mutualist that incorporated nutrients freely available to the plant, nutrients obtained only through mutualism with microbes, the cost of producing roots, the cost of trade with microbes, and neighborhood size. We sought ESS solutions as defined by the Nash equilibrium criterion. Key Assumptions: 1) Costs and benefits are fixed for all plants. 2) Freely available nutrients are equally shared between all competing plants in a local neighborhood. 3) Microbially obtained nutrients are shared equally between mutualistic plants in the local neighborhood. Conclusion: We found that mutualism could offer a competitive advantage if the net benefit was positive. Coexistence between mutualist strategies in our model happens because of competition between mutualists over the microbially available nutrient. Coexistence was more likely with greater neighborhood size but at the expense of mutualist fixation.

scholarly journals Game theoretic analysis of ideologically biased clickbait or fake news and real news

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjell Hausken
Keyword(s):  
Production Efficiency ◽  
Unit Cost ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Unit Effort ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Game Theoretic Model

A decision and game theoretic model is developed for how one and two news organisations strike balances between producing clickbait or fake news, and real news. Each news organisation seeks to attract gullible consumers who consume more clickbait or fake news than real news, and non-gullible consumers who conscientiously consume only real news. Increasing a news organisation budget results in obtaining both more clickbait or fake news, and more real news. More clickbait or fake news is produced if the news organisation’s unit cost of effort to produce real news, the production efficiency for clickbait or fake news, and the fraction of consumers consuming clickbait or fake news, increase. In contrast, less clickbait or fake news is produced if a news organisation’s unit cost of effort to produce clickbait or fake news, and the production efficiency for real news, increase, and the gullible consumers consume real news with a higher frequency. Lower unit effort costs and higher budget and production efficiencies cause higher utility for a news organisation and lower utility for the competing news organisation. Higher weight assigned to the contest over clickbait or fake news induces both news organ-isations to exert higher effort to produce clickbait or fake news. When the gullible consumers of a news organisation consume a relatively large amount of real news in comparison to the consumers of another news organisation, then the first news organisation exerts higher effort to produce real news and obtains higher utility than the other news organisation.

Reputation and Hegemonic Stability: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 445-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Alt ◽  
Randall L. Calvert ◽  
Brian D. Humes
Keyword(s):  
Incomplete Information ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
Significant Advance ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Theory Of Hegemonic Stability ◽  
Hegemonic Stability

We develop and explicate a game-theoretic model in which repeated play, incomplete information, and reputation are major elements. A significant advance of this model is the way it represents cooperation under incomplete information among rational actors of different sizes. The model is used to formalize certain aspects of the “theory of hegemonic stability.” It shows that the “dilemma” or “limits” of hegemonic stability look like natural attributes of games where reputation is involved, unifying both “benevolent” and “coercive” strands of hegemony theory. An example, drawn from recent developments in the Organization of Petroleum-exporting Countries, shows how our model of reputation guides the study of hegemonic regime construction. We conclude by comparing the nature of cooperative behavior under conditions of complete and incomplete information.

Media, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifeng Huang ◽  
Serra Boranbay-Akan ◽  
Ling Huang
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
Social Protests ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
The Media ◽  
Game Theoretic Model

Do authoritarian governments always censor news about protests to prevent unrest from spreading? Existing research on authoritarian politics stresses the danger that information spread within the society poses for a regime. In particular, media and Internet reports of social unrest are deemed to threaten authoritarian rule, as such reports may incite more protests and thus spread instability. We show that such reasoning is incomplete if social protests are targeted at local officials. Allowing media the freedom to report local protests may indeed lead to protest diffusion, but the increased probability of citizen protest also has two potential benefits for the regime: (1) identifying and addressing more social grievances, thus releasing potential revolutionary pressure on the regime; (2) forcing local officials to reduce misbehavior, thus reducing underlying social grievances. For authoritarian governments whose survival is vulnerable to citizen grievances, allowing the media to report social protests aimed at local governments can therefore enhance regime stability and protect its interests under many circumstances. We construct a game-theoretic model to analyze the problem and illustrate the argument with examples from China.

Stability in the informal value transfer systems: norms of trust or institutions of control?

2017 ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
A. Lyasko
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Transfer System ◽  
Value Transfer ◽  
Partner Interaction ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Game Theoretic Model ◽  
Informal Value Transfer System

Informal financial operations exist in the shadow of official regulation and cannot be protected by the formal legal instruments, therefore raising concerns about the enforcement of obligations taken by their participants. This paper analyzes two alternative types of auxiliary institutions, which can coordinate expectations of the members of informal value transfer systems, namely attitudes of trust and norms of social control. It offers some preliminary approaches to creating a game-theoretic model of partner interaction in the informal value transfer system. It also sheds light on the perspectives of further studies in this area of institutional economics.

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