Crime, Punishment, and Evolution in an Adversarial Game

Michael McBride (), Ryan Kendall (), Martin Short () and Maria D'Orsogna ()
Additional contact information
Ryan Kendall: Department of Economics, University of California-Irvine
Martin Short: Department of Mathematics, University of California-Los Angeles
Maria D'Orsogna: Department of Mathematics, California State University-Northridge

No 121308, Working Papers from University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics

Abstract: We examine the game theoretic properties of a model of crime first introduced by Short, Brantingham, and D'Orsogna (Short et al. 2010) as the SBD Adversarial Game. We identify the rationalizable strategies and one-shot equilibria under mul- tiple equilibrium refinements. We further show that SBD's main result about the effectiveness of defecting-punishers in driving the system to evolve to the cooperative equilibrium under an imitation dynamic does generalize to a best response dynamic, although the nature of this strategy's role differs significantly between the two dynamics. The analysis reveals that the positive externality in punishing crime in the SBD game converts the adversarial setting from a social dilemma to a coordination game. We provide policy implications and lessons learned about the evolution of cooperation more generally.

Keywords: Cooperation; Punishment; Evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2012-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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