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Altruistic Versus Spiteful Behavior in a Public Good Game

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Author Info
Alexander Matros
Abstract

This paper analyses an evolutionary version of the Public Good game of Eshel, Samuelson, and Shaked (1998) in which agents can choose between imitation and best-reply decision rules. We describe conditions under which altruistic and spiteful (maximizing) behavior arise: these conditions are established for any number of neighbors and any total number of agents in the population. Given mistake-free play, (short-run) outcomes are identical whether agents are constrained to employ an imitation rule only; or they can choose between imitation and best-reply rules. Given the possibility of mistakes, (long-run) outcomes vary across these two scenarios. The paper suggests how to provide public goods and gives an explanation of why we observe seemingly irrational cooperation - altruistic behavior - in the rational world.

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Paper provided by University of Pittsburgh, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 309.

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Date of creation: Dec 2006
Date of revision: May 2007
Handle: RePEc:pit:wpaper:309

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

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