Dynamic Properties of Evolutionary Multi-player Games in Finite Populations

Bin Wu, Arne Traulsen and Chaitanya S. Gokhale
Additional contact information
Bin Wu: Evolutionary Theory Group, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, August-Thienemann-Straße 2, 24306 Plön, Germany
Arne Traulsen: Evolutionary Theory Group, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, August-Thienemann-Straße 2, 24306 Plön, Germany
Chaitanya S. Gokhale: Evolutionary Theory Group, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, August-Thienemann-Straße 2, 24306 Plön, Germany

Games, 2013, vol. 4, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: William D. Hamilton famously stated that “human life is a many person game and not just a disjoined collection of two person games”. However, most of the theoretical results in evolutionary game theory have been developed for two player games. In spite of a multitude of examples ranging from humans to bacteria, multi-player games have received less attention than pairwise games due to their inherent complexity. Such complexities arise from the fact that group interactions cannot always be considered as a sum of multiple pairwise interactions. Mathematically, multi-player games provide a natural way to introduce non-linear, polynomial fitness functions into evolutionary game theory, whereas pairwise games lead to linear fitness functions. Similarly, studying finite populations is a natural way of introducing intrinsic stochasticity into population dynamics. While these topics have been dealt with individually, few have addressed the combination of finite populations and multi-player games so far. We are investigating the dynamical properties of evolutionary multi-player games in finite populations. Properties of the fixation probability and fixation time, which are relevant for rare mutations, are addressed in well mixed populations. For more frequent mutations, the average abundance is investigated in well mixed as well as in structured populations. While the fixation properties are generalizations of the results from two player scenarios, addressing the average abundance in multi-player games gives rise to novel outcomes not possible in pairwise games.

Keywords: multi-player games; finite population; fixation probability; fixation time; average abundance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/4/2/182/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/4/2/182/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jgames:v:4:y:2013:i:2:p:182-199:d:25483

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().