Publicação
Emergence and self-organization of cooperation
| Resumo: | This dissertation reports the main work I developed during my Ph.D. program. It contains my contributions to the field of population dynamics and a study of a global problem of cooperation. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) and stochastic population dynamics have proven to be powerful tools to describe frequency-dependent dynamics in evolutionary biology. More recently, EGT has become increasingly popular in the study of social settings and conflict resolution among humans, calling for an extension of the initial framework towards the boundless complexity of human reasoning. Here, I discuss the necessity of introducing different levels of rationality and prospective strategies, proving under which circumstances the equations that govern both rational and rationally-bounded players coincide. Moreover, since decision-making often relies in a continuum of possible options, I propose a novel equation to describe the evolution of populations with a continuum of strategies, analyzing why and when we can discretize the sets of possible strategies. Finally, when finite populations and stochastic effects are considered, the increasing population size or increasing number of individual configurations rapidly renders the analysis of stationary states prohibitive. Here, I also discuss a novel framework that allows us to define a hierarchy of approximations to the stationary distribution of any population dynamics described by a Markov process, overcoming the limitations of existing approaches. These results and methods are general in the sense that they are applicable to the study of different dilemmas and their respective gametheoretical representation. In the last part of this dissertation, I focus on problems related with global coordination for the preservation of a common good, such as climate change governance. Indeed, preventing global warming requires overall cooperation. Contributions will depend on uncertainty of future losses, which plays a key role in decision-making. Here, I discuss an evolutionary game theoretical model – and its stochastic dynamics in finite populations – in which decisions within small groups under high risk and stringent requirements toward success are shown to significantly raise the chances of coordinating to save the planet’s climate. This result calls for a decentralized or polycentric way of coordinating efforts to tame the planet’s climate. I further discuss whether a polycentric structure of multiple small-scale sanctioning institutions provides a viable solution to solve global dilemmas. Such structure is shown to help deterring non-cooperative behavior (when compared with a single global institution), even though it suffers, to a smaller extent, from most of the same problems as the top-down approach: sensitivity to risk perception and to overall uncertainty. Furthermore, I also discuss how world’s wealth inequality may influence the outcome of this type of collective dilemmas, studying how the segregation between rich and poor players harms cooperative behavior, even if rich tend to, at first, compensate for contributions (or lack of them) from the poor. Finally, I discuss in which conditions the establishment of pre-play contracts may help to overcome part of these problems. The results indicate that contracts are more effective if voluntary and more prevalent if small, acting as a costly signaling mechanism for a naturally cooperative group of individuals sharing common goals. This, in turn, if combined with some partnership advantages, creates more incentives to join, allowing both cooperation and the total membership to grow. |
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| Autores principais: | Vasconcelos, Vítor Vasco Lourenço de |
| Assunto: | Emergence of cooperation Evolution of Cooperation and Institutions Collective action Tragedy of the commons Climate change Complex systems Evolutionary game theory Evolutionary dynamics Emergência da Cooperação Evolução da Cooperação e Instituições Ação Coletiva Tragédia dos Comuns Alterações Climáticas Ciências da Sustentabilidade Redes Complexas Sistemas Complexos Teoria de Jogos Evolutiva Dinâmica Evolutiva |
| Ano: | 2017 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | tese de doutoramento |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | This dissertation reports the main work I developed during my Ph.D. program. It contains my contributions to the field of population dynamics and a study of a global problem of cooperation. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) and stochastic population dynamics have proven to be powerful tools to describe frequency-dependent dynamics in evolutionary biology. More recently, EGT has become increasingly popular in the study of social settings and conflict resolution among humans, calling for an extension of the initial framework towards the boundless complexity of human reasoning. Here, I discuss the necessity of introducing different levels of rationality and prospective strategies, proving under which circumstances the equations that govern both rational and rationally-bounded players coincide. Moreover, since decision-making often relies in a continuum of possible options, I propose a novel equation to describe the evolution of populations with a continuum of strategies, analyzing why and when we can discretize the sets of possible strategies. Finally, when finite populations and stochastic effects are considered, the increasing population size or increasing number of individual configurations rapidly renders the analysis of stationary states prohibitive. Here, I also discuss a novel framework that allows us to define a hierarchy of approximations to the stationary distribution of any population dynamics described by a Markov process, overcoming the limitations of existing approaches. These results and methods are general in the sense that they are applicable to the study of different dilemmas and their respective gametheoretical representation. In the last part of this dissertation, I focus on problems related with global coordination for the preservation of a common good, such as climate change governance. Indeed, preventing global warming requires overall cooperation. Contributions will depend on uncertainty of future losses, which plays a key role in decision-making. Here, I discuss an evolutionary game theoretical model – and its stochastic dynamics in finite populations – in which decisions within small groups under high risk and stringent requirements toward success are shown to significantly raise the chances of coordinating to save the planet’s climate. This result calls for a decentralized or polycentric way of coordinating efforts to tame the planet’s climate. I further discuss whether a polycentric structure of multiple small-scale sanctioning institutions provides a viable solution to solve global dilemmas. Such structure is shown to help deterring non-cooperative behavior (when compared with a single global institution), even though it suffers, to a smaller extent, from most of the same problems as the top-down approach: sensitivity to risk perception and to overall uncertainty. Furthermore, I also discuss how world’s wealth inequality may influence the outcome of this type of collective dilemmas, studying how the segregation between rich and poor players harms cooperative behavior, even if rich tend to, at first, compensate for contributions (or lack of them) from the poor. Finally, I discuss in which conditions the establishment of pre-play contracts may help to overcome part of these problems. The results indicate that contracts are more effective if voluntary and more prevalent if small, acting as a costly signaling mechanism for a naturally cooperative group of individuals sharing common goals. This, in turn, if combined with some partnership advantages, creates more incentives to join, allowing both cooperation and the total membership to grow. |
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