Related papers: Friendly-rivalry solution to the iterated $n$-pers…

Cooperation among self-interested players in a social dilemma is fragile and easily interrupted by mistakes. In this work, we study the repeated $n$-person public-goods game and search for a strategy that forms a cooperative Nash…

In a social dilemma, cooperation is collectively optimal, yet individually each group member prefers to defect. A class of successful strategies of direct reciprocity were recently found for the iterated prisoner's dilemma and for the…

For the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, there exist Markov strategies which solve the problem when we restrict attention to the long term average payoff. When used by both players these assure the cooperative payoff for each of them. Neither…

Biological and social scientists have long been interested in understanding how to reconcile individual and collective interests in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Many effective strategies have been proposed, and they are often categorized…

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed to support human decision-making. This use of LLMs has concerning implications, especially when their prescriptions affect the welfare of others. To gauge how LLMs make social…

We consider a 3-player game in the normal form, in which each player has two actions. We assume that the game is symmetric and repeated infinitely many times. At each stage players make their choices knowing only the average payoffs from…

Is it rational for selfish individuals to cooperate? The conventional answer based on analysis of games such as the Prisoners Dilemma (PD) is that it is not, even though mutual cooperation results in a better outcome for all. This…

When can cooperation arise from self-interested decisions in public goods games? And how can we help agents to act cooperatively? We examine these classical questions in a pivotal participation game, a variant of public good games, where…

The finitely repeated Prisoners' Dilemma is a good illustration of the discrepancy between the strategic behaviour suggested by a game-theoretic analysis and the behaviour often observed among human players, where cooperation is maintained…

We present a polynomial-time algorithm that always finds an (approximate) Nash equilibrium for repeated two-player stochastic games. The algorithm exploits the folk theorem to derive a strategy profile that forms an equilibrium by…

Direct reciprocity is one of the key mechanisms accounting for cooperation in our social life. According to recent understanding, most of classical strategies for direct reciprocity fall into one of two classes, `partners' or `rivals'. A…

The iterated prisoner's dilemma is a game that produces many counter-intuitive and complex behaviors in a social environment, based on very simple basic rules. It illustrates that cooperation can be a good thing even in a competitive world,…

An analysis of several important aspects of competition or conflict in games, social choice and decision theory is presented. Inherent difficulties and complexities in cooperation are highlighted. These have over the years led to a certain…

Game theory provides a quantitative framework for analyzing the behavior of rational agents. The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma in particular has become a standard model for studying cooperation and cheating, with cooperation often emerging as…

We study the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game where players are allowed to establish new interactions with others. By employing a simple coevolutionary rule entailing only two crucial parameters, we find that…

The evolution of cooperation has remained an important problem in evolutionary theory and social sciences. In this regard, a curious question is why consistent cooperative and defective personalities exist and if they serve a role in the…

The emergence of cooperation figures among the main goal of game theory in competitive-cooperative environments. Potential games have long been hinted as viable alternatives to study realistic player behavior. Here, we expand the potential…

In many cases the Nash equilibria are not predictive of the experimental players' behaviour. For some games of Game Theory it is proposed here a method to estimate the probabilities with which the different options will be actually chosen…

A notion of pi-tolerant equilibrium is defined that takes into account that players have some tolerance regarding payoffs in a game. This solution concept generalizes Nash and refines epsilon-Nash equilibrium in a natural way. We show that…

Cooperative behavior, where one individual incurs a cost to help another, is a wide spread phenomenon. Here we study direct reciprocity in the context of the alternating Prisoner's Dilemma. We consider all strategies that can be implemented…