How to Analyze Models of Nonlinear Public Goods

Marco Archetti
Additional contact information
Marco Archetti: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

Games, 2018, vol. 9, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: Public goods games often assume that the effect of the public good is a linear function of the number of contributions. In many cases, however, especially in biology, public goods have nonlinear effects, and nonlinear games are known to have dynamics and equilibria that can differ dramatically from linear games. Here I explain how to analyze nonlinear public goods games using the properties of Bernstein polynomials, and how to approximate the equilibria. I use mainly examples from the evolutionary game theory of cancer, but the approach can be used for a wide range of nonlinear public goods games.

Keywords: game theory; public goods; cooperation; nonlinear games; evolutionary dynamics; Bernstein polynomials; cancer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/9/2/17/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/9/2/17/ (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:9:y:2018:i:2:p:17-:d:139503

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 ().