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Endogenous Neighborhood Selection and the Attainment of Cooperation in a Spatial Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

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Abstract

There is a large literature in economics and elsewhere on the emergence and evolution of cooperation in the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Recently this literature has expanded to include games in a setting where agents play only with local neighbors in a specified geography. In this paper we explore how the ability of agents to move and choose new locations and new neighbors influences the emergence of cooperation. First, we explore the dynamics of cooperation by investigating agent strategies that yield Markov transition probabilities. We show how different agent strategies yield different Markov chains which generate different asymptotic behaviors in regard to the attainment of cooperation. Second, we investigate how agent movement affects the attainment of cooperation in various networks using agent-based simulations. We show how network structure and density can affect cooperation with and without agent movement.

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Correspondence to Troy Tassier.

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Barr, J., Tassier, T. Endogenous Neighborhood Selection and the Attainment of Cooperation in a Spatial Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Comput Econ 35, 211–234 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-009-9184-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-009-9184-4

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