Rewarding cooperation in social dilemmas

Haydée Lugo
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Raul Jimenez ()

UC3M Working papers. Economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía

Abstract: One of the most direct human mechanisms of promoting cooperation is rewarding it. We study the effect of sharing a reward among cooperators in the most stringent form of social dilemma. Thus, individuals confront a new dilemma: on the one hand, they may be inclined to choose the shared reward despite the possibility of being exploited by defectors; on the other hand, if too many players do that, cooperators will obtain a poor reward and defectors will outperform them. By appropriately tuning the amount to be shared we can cast a vast variety of scenarios, including traditional ones in the study of cooperation as well as more complex situations where unexpected behavior can occur. We provide a complete classification of the equilibria of the nplayer game as well as of the evolutionary dynamics. Beyond, we extend our analysis to a general class of public good games where competition among individuals with the same strategy exists.

Keywords: Reward; Social; dilemma; N-player; game; Prisoner's; dilemma (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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