 Mercenary punishment in structured populationsHsuan-Wei Lee, Colin Cleveland and Attila Szolnoki Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2022, vol. 417, issue C Abstract: Punishing those who refuse to participate in common efforts is a known and intensively studied way to maintain cooperation among self-interested agents. But this act is costly, hence punishers who are generally also engaged in the original joint venture, become vulnerable, which jeopardizes the effectiveness of this incentive. As an alternative, we may hire special players, whose only duty is to watch the population and punish defectors. Such a policelike or mercenary punishment can be maintained by a tax-based fund. If this tax is negligible, a cyclic dominance may emerge among different strategies. When this tax is relevant then this solution disappears. In the latter case, the fine level becomes a significant factor that determines whether punisher players coexist with cooperators or alternatively with defectors. The maximal average outcome can be reached at an intermediate cost value of punishment. Our observations highlight that we should take special care when such kind of punishment and accompanying tax are introduced to reach a collective goal. Keywords: Cooperation; Public goods game; Punishment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:417:y:2022:i:c:s0096300321008791 DOI: 10.1016/j.amc.2021.126797 Access Statistics for this article Applied Mathematics and Computation is currently edited by Theodore Simos More articles in Applied Mathematics and Computation from Elsevier |
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