[pt] Utilizando o instrumental da teoria dos jogos evolucionários, a proposta desta dissertação é analisar as interações entre emissores de dívida e agências de avaliação de risco de crédito em um ambiente com assimetria de informação. Enquanto os primeiros precisam das notas emitidas pelas agências para acessar fontes de financiamentos no mercado, as agências são remuneradas pela prestação desse serviço. Os resultados mostram que, de forma geral, quando o número de emissores grau de investimento é pequeno, incentiva-se a adoção de uma estratégia pouco transparente de divulgação de informação por parte do emissor, aumentando a assimetria de informação. A melhor resposta das agências é utilizar uma análise básica do perfil de crédito de seus clientes. O aumento do número de emissores grau de investimento na economia incentiva o aperfeiçoamento das políticas corporativas de transparência, enquanto as agências sofisticam sua análise com o objetivo de evitar os custos de reputação associados a erros de avaliação. Empiricamente, os resultados são condizentes com a evolução da economia colombiana nas últimas décadas. A melhoria do ambiente macroeconômico desse país atraiu emissores grau de investimento incentivando a atuação de agências que utilizam metodologia de análise sofisticada e emissores que adotam uma estratégia transparente de divulgação de suas informações. / [en] Using evolutionary game theory, this work aims to analyse the interactions between debt issuers and credit rating agencies in an asymmetric information environment. While the ratings grades are required by issuers to access funding sources for their investment projects, the agency s revenue is provided by this service. The results show that when the number of investment grade issuers is small, non-transparency strategy and basic methodology of analysis dominate, worsening the information asymmetry problem. The increase in the number of investment grade issuers encourages transparency policies while the agencies adopt a sophisticated analysis, avoiding the reputation costs associated with errors. Empirically, the results are consistent with the evolution of the Colombian economy in recent decades. The country s improvement in the macroeconomic environment attracted investment grade issuers encouraging the proliferation of sophisticated rating agencies and transparent issuers.

This dissertation is an attempt at establishing a bridge between biology and physics leading naturally from the field of phase transitions in physics to the cooperative nature of living systems. We show that this aim can be realized by supplementing the current field of evolutionary game theory with a new form of self-organized temporal criticality. In the case of ordinary criticality, the units of a system choosing either cooperation or defection under the influence of the choices done by their nearest neighbors, undergo a significant change of behavior when the intensity of social influence has a critical value. At criticality, the behavior of the individual units is correlated with that of all other units, in addition to the behavior of the nearest neighbors. The spontaneous transition to criticality of this work is realized as follows: the units change their behavior (defection or cooperation) under the social influence of their nearest neighbors and update the intensity of their social influence spontaneously by the feedback they get from the payoffs of the game (environment). If units, which are selfish, get higher benefit with respect to their previous play, they increase their interest to interact with other units and vice versa. Doing this, the behavior of single units and the whole system spontaneously evolve towards criticality, thereby realizing a global behavior favoring cooperation. In the case when the interacting units are oscillators with their own periodicity, homeodynamics concerns, the individual payoff is the synchronization with the nearest neighbors (i.e., lowering the energy of the system), the spontaneous transition to criticality generates fluctuations characterized by the joint action of periodicity and crucial events of the same kind as those revealed by the current analysis of the dynamics of the brain. This result is expected to explain the efficiency of enzyme catalyzers, on the basis of a new non-equilibrium statistical physics. We argue that the results obtained apply to sociological and psychological systems as well as to elementary biological systems.

Ces travaux de recherche abordent un problème de défense anti-aérien, usuellement appelé problème d'allocation d'armes à des cibles dans la littérature. L'allocation d'armes à des cibles est un problème bien connu de la recherche opérationnelle militaire qui a rencontré un franc succès parmi la communauté des chercheurs, et qui aujourd'hui encore suscite un large engouement puisque sa propriété démontrée NP-difficile en fait un problème qui reste irrésolu. Que ce soit par des méthodes analytiques ou meta-heuristiques, le problème d'allocation d'armes à des cibles a fait l'objet de nombreuses propositions de résolution. Cependant, il est assez surprenant de voir que la modélisation proposée pour ce problème n'a guère évolué depuis qu'il est apparu pour la première fois dans la littérature en 1950. Cette modélisation peut être considérée comme obsolète aujourd'hui et ne répond plus aux exigences qui accompagnent les technologies modernes. En effet, en 60 ans le champ de bataille a complètement changé, et dans la littérature seulement un nombre limité d'études proposent de prendre en compte ces évolutions. L'étude menée dans cette thèse propose de s'intéresser aux systèmes de Commandes et Contrôles (C2) pour des applications anti-aériennes. Habituellement un système C2 est composé de senseurs, d'un centre d'opérations tactiques et d'un ou plusieurs lanceurs. Les senseurs alimentent le centre d'opérations tactiques à partir des informations qu'ils recueillent, puis, une fois ces informations reçues, le centre d'opérations tactiques va interpréter ces données afin de calculer l'atteignabilité des menaces. Enfin, un plan d'engagement qui comprend l'allocation des munitions disponibles aux cibles et une date de tir sont proposés à un opérateur humain qui aura pour mission de valider cette proposition en totalité ou partiellement, puis va procéder à l'engagement des menaces. Pour remplir cet objectif, une approche innovante et faisant l'objet d'un dépôt de brevet a été développée afin de répondre aux difficultés relatives aux problèmes d'optimisation multi-objectifs. Ensuite, un algorithme d'optimisation continue basé sur la combinaison de l'optimisation par essaim particulaires avec la théorie des jeux évolutionnaires est proposé pour optimiser les dates de tirs. L'allocation optimale, elle, est obtenue en adaptant cette méthode continue au cas discret. La preuve que l'algorithme développé est localement convergent est donnée dans cette thèse. D'autre part, l'aspect temps-réel a également fait l'objet d'une recherche attentive et l'algorithme précédemment cité a été hybridé avec les réseaux de neurones afin d'accélérer le temps de calcul des composants identifiés comme "lourds" en termes de charge de calcul. Enfin, cette étude ne se limite pas à une application de recherche opérationnelle militaire, mais inclut quelques concepts élémentaires de guidage et de navigation pour le calcul d'atteignabilité des menaces. Finalement, cette thèse permet d'identifier que les points suivants doivent faire l'objet d'une attention très particulière afin de développer un outil d'aide à la décision efficace. D'abord, la métrique d'évaluation d'un bon plan d'engagement doit être clairement analysée. Ensuite, le plan d'engagement proposé doit être stable et ne pas proposer de changements soudains qui pourraient perturber l'opérateur. Le troisième point concerne la robustesse de la solution proposée et sa capacité à faire face aux situations les plus compliquées. Quatrièmement, le temps et la charge de calcul sont des contraintes techniques qui ne peuvent pas être outrepassées. Finalement, les exigences posées lors de la préparation de mission et qui dépendent du contexte doivent faire l'objet d'une attention particulière. C'est pourquoi, l'outil d'aide à la décision proposé doit permettre un allègement significatif de la charge de travail de l'opérateur ainsi que la réduction considérable du stress lié à ce contexte / This research investigates a practical air defence problem, usually named Weapon Target Assignment (WTA) in the literature. The WTA problem is a well-known problem of military operation research that encountered a wide success in the research community, but still nowadays since it remains an unsolved problem because of its NP-hardness property. From analytical to heuristic methods, the WTA was deeply investigated and many attempts to solve this problem have been proposed. However, the proposed modelling of this problem is consistent with the 1950's technologies. Thus, the proposed modelling found in the literature can be considered as obsolete and cannot fit the requirement of the current technology advances. Indeed, the battle field dramatically changes over 60 years, and the recent literature proposes only few studies taking into account these amendments. The herein study proposes to investigate a Command & Control system (C2) in air defence applications. Usually a C2 system includes sensors, a Tactical Operation Centre (TOC) and one or more launchers. The sensors provide information about aerial tactical situation to the TOC. This TOC is in charge of evaluating the received information in order to compute the attainability of the targets, then an engagement plan that includes the assignment of the available weapons to the incoming targets and a date to fire for each assignment. This engagement plan is then proposed to one human operator in charge of accepting whole or part of this engagement plan and engage the targets following the received instructions. To achieve this goal, an innovative and patented approach to mitigate the issues related to multi-objective optimisation is proposed. Then, a continuous optimisation algorithm based on the combination of the Particle Swarm Optimisation and the Evolutionary Game Theory was proposed to determine the best dates to fire. The optimal assignment was obtained by adapting the aforementioned algorithm to the discrete case. This thesis also gives the proof that the designed algorithms are locally convergent and intensive benchmarking confirms the developed theory. In order to respect the real-time requirement, it was also devised to use the Neural Networks to lighten the identified burdensome parts of the algorithm and decrease computational time. Not limited to the military operation research field, the herein study reuse some basic concepts of missile guidance and navigation to compute the attainability of the targets. From this thesis, it can be identified that following aspects need to be carefully considered to provide an efficient decision making support to a human operator: First, clearly define what a good engagement plan is. Second, the engagement plan must be steady to avoid high rate changing in the assignments that could significantly disturb the operator. Third, the proposed engagement also must be reliable and robust to face any possible situations. Fourth, the computation time and computation load are technical constraints that cannot be overstepped. Finally, the operational constraints related to the mission context defined during a pre-mission stage must also be taken into account. Therefore, the proposed decision making support must help and significantly reduce the operator's work load in this situation of high stress and sensitive context

Cette thèse a pour sujet les effets que l’information a sur les incitations. Les trois articles fournissent et explorent des résultats lorsque l’information est la principale variable d’intérêt, est endogène, pas homogène entre les acteurs et évolue dans le temps d’une manière qui n’est pas nécessairement rationnelle. Le premier article étudie les problèmes de hold-up dans les hiérarchies verticales avec la sélection adverse montrant qu’alors que le pouvoir de négociation des travailleurs augmente, les distorsions provenant de l’asymétrie d’information disparaissent. En outre, il étudie l’effet de la scolarité et du degré d’hétérogénéité de la population de travailleurs sur la répartition du pouvoir de négociation dans les marchés réglementés. Le deuxième article assouplit l’hypothèse des croyances homogènes dans les relations principal-agent avec sélection adverse. Dans un apprentissage évolutif qui est imitatif, les principaux peuvent avoir des croyances différentes sur la répartition des types d’agents dans la population. La convergence à une croyance uniforme dépend de la taille relative de la polarisation dans les croyances. En outre, le modèle est une version d’un cobweb stable. Notre approche offre des explications pour l’alternance des périodes avec quantité oscillante et relativement stable. Le troisième article étudie la fac¸on dont le contenu informatif des politiques juridiques, comme la responsabilité stricte et négligence, en cas de soucis morales, influence la conception optimale des régimes de responsabilité. Plusieurs cas récents ont montré qu’un individu ayant causé un dommage s’expose non seulement a une sanction légale — par exemple, une amende — mais aussi a un boycott social, la désapprobation ou la stigmatisation. L’article montre que le choix d’une stratégie dépend de façon complexe de l’importance du dommage et du “coût moral”. / This thesis focuses on the effects that information has on incentives. The three papers provide and explore some results when the information is the main variable of interest, it is made endogenous, not homogeneous between actors and evolving over time in a way that is not necessarily rational. The first paper studies hold-up problems in vertical hierarchies with adverse selection showing that as the bargaining power of the worker increases, distortions coming from asymmetric information vanish. Moreover, it studies the effect of schooling and degree of heterogeneity in the workforce on the allocation of bargaining power in regulating markets. The second paper relaxes the common assumption of homogeneous beliefs in principal-agent relationships with adverse selection. In an evolutionary learning set-up, which is imitative, principals can have different beliefs about the distribution of agents’ types in the population. Convergence to a uniform belief depends on the relative size of the bias in beliefs. In addition, the set-up is a version of a stable cobweb model. Our approach offers explanations for alternating periods of oscillating and relatively steady quantity. The third paper studies how the informative content of legal policies as strict-liability and fault-based, in case of moral concerns, influences the optimal design of liability regimes. Many recent cases show that an individual found to have caused harm faces not only the possibility of a legal sanction — e.g., the damages he must pay — but also social boycott, disapproval or stigma. The paper shows that the choice of a policy depends in a complex way on the magnitude of the harm and the “moral cost”.Keywords: Bargaining, Adverse Selection, Hold-up, Evolutionary Game Theory, Heterogeneous Beliefs, Bifurcation Theory, Boycott, Law Enforcement, Strict Liability, Negligence.

La théorie des jeux évolutionnaires est un outil qui permet d’étudier l’évolution des stratégies dans une population composée d’un grand nombre d’agents qui interagissent d’une façon continue et aléatoire. Dans cette théorie, il y a deux concepts essentiels qui sont la stratégie évolutivement stable (ESS), et la dynamique de réplication. Une stratégie évolutivement stable est une stratégie, qui, si adoptée par toute la population,ne peut pas être envahie par une autre stratégie ”mutante” utilisée par une petite fraction de la population. Ce concept statique est un raffinement de l’équilibre de Nash, et il ne peut pas renseigner, par exemple, sur la durée du temps nécessaire pour que l’ESS élimine la stratégie mutante. La dynamique de réplication, originalement proposée par Hawk-Dove, est un modèle dynamique qui permet de prédire l’évolution de la fraction de chaque stratégie dans la population en fonction du temps, en réponse aux gains des stratégies et l’état de la population.Dans cette thèse, nous proposons dans une première partie une extension de la dynamique de réplication classique en y introduisant des délais hétérogènes et aléatoires.En effet, la plupart des phénomènes qui se produisent prennent un temps incertain avant d’avoir des résultats. Nous étudions l’effet de la distribution des délais sur la stabilité de l’ESS dans la dynamique de réplication et nous considérons les distributions uniforme, exponentielle, et Gamma (ou Erlang). Dans les cas des distributions uniforme et Gamma, nous trouvons la valeur critique de la moyenne à laquelle la stabilité de l’équilibre est perdue et des oscillations permanentes apparaissent. Dans le cas de la distribution exponentielle, nous montrons que la stabilité de l’équilibre ne peut être perdue,et ce pour toute valeur de la moyenne de la distribution. Par ailleurs, nous montrons que la distribution exponentielle peut affecter la stabilité de l’ESS quand une seule stratégie subit un délai aléatoire issu de cette distribution. Nous étudions également le cas où les délais sont discrets et nous trouvons une condition suffisante et indépendante des valeurs des délais pour la stabilité de l’équilibre. Dans tous les cas, nous montrons que les délais aléatoires sont moins risqués que les délais constants pour la stabilité de l’équilibre, vu que la valeur moyenne critique des délais aléatoires est toujours supérieure de celle des délais constants. En outre, nous considérons comme paramètre de bifurcation la moyenne de la distribution des délais et nous étudions les propriétés de la solution périodique qui apparait à la bifurcation de Hopf, et ce en utilisant une méthode de perturbation non linéaire. En effet, à la bifurcation de Hopf, une oscillation périodique stable apparait dont l’amplitude est fonction de la moyenne de la distribution. Nous déterminons analytiquement l’amplitude de l’oscillation au voisinage de la bifurcation de Hopf en fonction du paramètre de bifurcation et de la matrice des jeux dans les cas des distributions de Dirac, uniforme, Gamma et discrète, et nous appuyons nos résultats avec des simulations numériques. Dans une deuxième partie, nous considérons une population hétérogène composée de plusieurs communautés qui interagissent d’une manière non-uniforme. Pour chaque communauté, nous définissons les matrices des jeux et les probabilités d’interaction avec les autres communautés. Dans ce contexte, nous définissons trois ESS avec différents niveaux de stabilité contre les mutations: un ESS fort, un ESS faible et un ESS intermédiaire. Nous définissons un ESS fort comme suit: si toute la population adopte l’ESS, alors l’ESS ne peut pas être envahi par une petite fraction de mutants composée d’agents de toutes les communautés. / In this dissertation, we study evolutionary game theory which is a mathematical tool used to model and predict the evolution of strategies in a population composed of a largenumber of players. In this theory, there are two basic concepts which are the evolutionarilystable strategy (ESS) and the replicator dynamics. The ESS is originally definedas follows [1]: if all the population adopts the ESS, then no alternative strategy used bya sufficiently small fraction of the population can invade the population.The ESS is astatic concept and a refinement of a Nash equilibrium. It does not allow us, for example,to estimate the time required for the ESS to overcome the mutant strategy, neither to predictthe asymptotic distribution of strategies in the population. The replicator dynamics,originally introduced in [2], is a model of evolution of strategies according to which the growth rate of a given strategy is proportional to how well this strategy performs relative to the average pay off in the population.In the first part of this work, we propose an extended version of the replicator dynamics which takes into account heterogeneous random delays. Indeed, in many situations,the presence of uncertain delays is ubiquitous. We first consider continuous delays and we study the effect of the distribution of delays on the asymptotic stability of the mixed equilibrium in the replicator dynamics. In the case of uniform and Gamma delay distributions,we find the critical mean delay at which a Hopf bifurcation is created and the stability of the mixed equilibrium is lost. When the distribution of delays is exponential, we prove that the stability of the equilibrium cannot be affected by the delays. However, when only one strategy is delayed according to the exponential distribution,the asymptotic stability of the ESS can be lost. In all the cases, we show that the critical mean delay value is higher than that of constant delays, and thus random delays are less threatening than constant delays. In addition, we consider discrete delays and one o four results is that, when the instantaneous term is dominant, that is when the probabilityof zero delay is sufficiently high, the stability of the ESS cannot be lost.Furthermore, by taking as a bifurcation parameter the mean delay distribution, we examine the properties of the bifurcating periodic solution created near the Hopf bifurcationusing a nonlinear perturbation method. Indeed, near the Hopf bifurcation, a stable periodic oscillation appears whose amplitude depends on the value of the bifurcation parameter. We give a closed-form expression of the amplitude of the periodic solution and we validate our results with numerical simulations.In the second part, we consider an heterogeneous population composed of several communities which interact in a nonuniform manner. Each community has its own set of strategies, payoffs, and interaction probabilities. Indeed, individuals of a population have many inherent differences that favor the appearance of groups or clusters. In this scenario, we define three ESS with different levels of stability against mutations: strong,weak, and intermediate ESS, and we examine their connection to each other. A strongESS is a strategy that, when adopted by all the population, cannot be invaded by a sufficientlysmall fraction of mutants composed of agents from all the communities. Incontrast, a weak ESS is a strategy wherein each community resists invasion by a sufficientlysmall fraction of mutants in that community (local mutants). In the intermediateESS, the population adopting the ESS cannot be invaded by a small fraction of mutantswhen we consider the total fitness of the population rather than the fitness of eachcommunity separately.

Complexity underlying life is largely governed by the dynamics of interaction within and between living and nonliving entities. Evolutionary strategy games are extensively used in modelling and understanding complex behaviors in a wide range of fields including theoretical biology, social interactions, economics, politics, defense and security. Strategy games are said to distill the key elements of interactions be- tween real-world entities and organizations - one of the challenges lies in determining the mapping of complex real life situation dynamics to that of a certain game. That leads us to the two major research questions outlined below. In this thesis, we are taking evolutionary games a step further to investigate the interplay between local and global dynamics, where local dynamics are repre- sented by locally pairwise interactions among the population's players governed by the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game. To represent the global dynamics, two main modelling ideas are proposed, in the first model; a mixed evolutionary game is in- troduced where players are competing globally on the population level in a minority game. The interplay between local and global dynamics in this model represents the interplay between different scopes of competition between the same players. Sec- ondly, we introduce a model for studying the effect of sharing global information concerning a population of players, shedding light on how global information can alter the emerging dynamics of local interactions. Furthermore, the thesis addresses the question of whether games - with different dynamics - have unique signatures (footprints) that can be used in recognizing and differentiating among them, and whether these footprints are consistent along the evolutionary path of these games. We show here that by building winning networks between players, and determining network motifs of these winning networks, we can obtain motifs' counts signals that are sufficient to categorize and recognize the game's utility matrix used by the players. We also demonstrate that these footprints - motifs' counts - are consistent along the evolutionary path of the games, due to a hyper-cyclic behavior that exists between strategies. Finally, we show that this approach is capable of identifying whether a certain population is driven by local dynamics or both local and global dynamics using the proposed mixed game.

No description available.

El mundo de las telecomunicaciones está cambiando de un escenario donde únicamente las personas estaban conectadas a un modelo donde prácticamente todos los dispositivos y sensores se encuentran conectados, también conocido como Internet de las cosas (IoT), donde miles de millones de dispositivos se conectarán a Internet a través de conexiones móviles y redes fijas. En este contexto, hay muchos retos que superar, desde el desarrollo de nuevos estándares de comunicación al estudio de la viabilidad económica de los posibles escenarios futuros. En esta tesis nos hemos centrado en el estudio de la viabilidad económica de diferentes escenarios mediante el uso de conceptos de microeconomía, teoría de juegos, optimización no lineal, economía de redes y redes inalámbricas. La tesis analiza la transición desde redes centradas en el servicio de tráfico HTC a redes centradas en tráfico MTC desde un punto de vista económico. El primer escenario ha sido diseñado para centrarse en las primeras etapas de la transición, en la que ambos tipos de tráfico son servidos bajo la misma infraestructura de red. En el segundo escenario analizamos la siguiente etapa, en la que el servicio a los usuarios MTC se realiza mediante una infraestructura dedicada. Finalmente, el tercer escenario analiza la provisión de servicios basados en MTC a usuarios finales, mediante la infraestructura analizada en el escenario anterior. Gracias al análisis de todos los escenarios, hemos observado que la transición de redes centradas en usuarios HTC a redes MTC es posible y que la provisión de servicios en tales escenarios es viable. Además, hemos observado que el comportamiento de los usuarios es esencial para determinar la viabilidad de los diferentes modelos de negocio, y por tanto, es necesario estudiar el comportamiento y las preferencias de los usuarios en profundidad en estudios futuros. Específicamente, los factores más relevantes son la sensibilidad de los usuarios al retardo en los datos recopilados por los sensores y la cantidad de los mismos. También hemos observado que la diferenciación del tráfico en categorías mejora el uso de las redes y permite crear nuevos servicios empleando datos que, de otro modo, no se aprovecharían, lo cual nos permite mejorar la monetización de la infraestructura. También hemos demostrado que la provisión de capacidad es un mecanismo válido, alternativo a la fijación de precios, para la optimización de los beneficios de los proveedores de servicio. Finalmente, se ha demostrado que es posible crear roles específicos para ofrecer servicios IoT en el mercado de las telecomunicaciones, específicamente, los IoT-SPs, que proporcionan servicios basados en sensores inalámbricos utilizando infraestructuras de acceso de terceros y sus propias redes de sensores. En resumen, en esta tesis hemos intentado demostrar la viabilidad económica de modelos de negocio basados en redes futuras IoT, así como la aparición de nuevas oportunidades y roles de negocio, lo cual nos permite justificar económicamente el desarrollo y la implementación de las tecnologías necesarias para ofrecer servicios de acceso inalámbrico masivo a dispositivos MTC. / The communications world is moving from a standalone devices scenario to a all-connected scenario known as Internet of Things (IoT), where billions of devices will be connected to the Internet through mobile and fixed networks. In this context, there are several challenges to face, from the development of new standards to the study of the economical viability of the different future scenarios. In this dissertation we have focused on the study of the economic viability of different scenarios using concepts of microeconomics, game theory, non-linear optimization, network economics and wireless networks. The dissertation analyzes the transition from a Human Type Communications (HTC) to a Machine Type Communications (MTC) centered network from an economic point of view. The first scenario is designed to focus on the first stages of the transition, where HTC and MTC traffic are served on a common network infrastructure. The second scenario analyzes the provision of connectivity service to MTC users using a dedicated network infrastructure, while the third stage is centered in the analysis of the provision of services based on the MTC data over the infrastructure studied in the previous scenario. Thanks to the analysis of all the scenarios we have observed that the transition from HTC users-centered networks to MTC networks is possible and that the provision of services in such scenarios is viable. In addition, we have observed that the behavior of the users is essential in order to determine the viability of a business model, and therefore, it is needed to study their behavior and preferences in depth in future studios. Specifically, the most relevant factors are the sensitivity of the users to the delay and to the amount of data gathered by the sensors. We also have observed that the differentiation of the traffic in categories improves the usage of the networks and allows to create new services thanks to the data that otherwise would not be used, improving the monetization of the infrastructure and the data. In addition, we have shown that the capacity provision is a valid mechanism for providers' profit optimization, as an alternative to the pricing mechanisms. Finally, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to create dedicated roles to offer IoT services in the telecommunications market, specifically, the IoT-SPs, which provide wireless-sensor-based services to the final users using a third party infrastructure. Summarizing, this dissertation tries to demonstrate the economic viability of the future IoT networks business models as well as the emergence of new business opportunities and roles in order to justify economically the development and implementation of the new technologies required to offer massive wireless access to machine devices. / El món de les telecomunicacions està canviant d'un escenari on únicament les persones estaven connectades a un model on pràcticament tots els dispositius i sensors es troben connectats, també conegut com a Internet de les Coses (IoT) , on milers de milions de dispositius es connectaran a Internet a través de connexions mòbils i xarxes fixes. En aquest context, hi ha molts reptes que superar, des del desenrotllament de nous estàndards de comunicació a l'estudi de la viabilitat econòmica dels possibles escenaris futurs. En aquesta tesi ens hem centrat en l'estudi de la viabilitat econòmica de diferents escenaris per mitjà de l'ús de conceptes de microeconomia, teoria de jocs, optimització no lineal, economia de xarxes i xarxes inalàmbriques. La tesi analitza la transició des de xarxes centrades en el servici de tràfic HTC a xarxes centrades en tràfic MTC des d'un punt de vista econòmic. El primer escenari ha sigut dissenyat per a centrar-se en les primeres etapes de la transició, en la que ambdós tipus de tràfic són servits davall la mateixa infraestructura de xarxa. En el segon escenari analitzem la següent etapa, en la que el servici als usuaris MTC es realitza per mitjà d'una infraestructura dedicada. Finalment, el tercer escenari analitza la provisió de servicis basats en MTC a usuaris finals, per mitjà de la infraestructura analitzada en l'escenari anterior. Als paràgrafs següents es descriu amb més detall cada escenari. Gràcies a l'anàlisi de tots els escenaris, hem observat que la transició de xarxes centrades en usuaris HTC a xarxes MTC és possible i que la provisió de servicis en tals escenaris és viable. A més a més, hem observat que el comportament dels usuaris és essencial per a determinar la viabilitat dels diferents models de negoci, i per tant, és necessari estudiar el comportament i les preferències dels usuaris en profunditat en estudis futurs. Específicament, els factors més rellevants són la sensibilitat dels usuaris al retard en les dades recopilats pels sensors i la quantitat dels mateixos. També hem observat que la diferenciació del tràfic en categories millora l'ús de les xarxes i permet crear nous servicis emprant dades que, d'una altra manera, no s'aprofitarien, la qual cosa ens permet millorar la monetització de la infraestructura. També hem demostrat que la provisió de capacitat és un mecanisme vàlid, alternatiu a la fixació de preus, per a l'optimització dels beneficis dels proveïdors de servici. Finalment, s'ha demostrat que és possible crear rols específics per a oferir servicis IoT en el mercat de les telecomunicacions, específicament, els IoT-SPs, que proporcionen servicis basats en sensors inalàmbrics utilitzant infraestructures d'accés de tercers i les seues pròpies xarxes de sensors. En resum, en aquesta tesi hem intentat demostrar la viabilitat econòmica de models de negoci basats en xarxes futures IoT, així com l'aparició de noves oportunitats i rols de negoci, la qual cosa ens permet justificar econòmicament el desenrotllament i la implementació de les tecnologies necessàries per a oferir servicis d'accés inalàmbric massiu a dispositius MTC. / Sanchis Cano, Á. (2018). Economic analysis of wireless sensor-based services in the framework of the Internet of Things. A game-theoretical approach [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/102642 / TESIS

In recent decades, it was shown that belowground competition for some plants may take form of the tragedy of the commons (TOC). In these plants, the competing neighbours invest more in root systems than would be appropriate for optimal nutrient uptake for the group and also more than they do when grown alone. However, there is also strong evidence that other species do not follow TOC, and tailor their root system to best nutrient exploitation irrespectively of competitor presence. The root investment strategy of these plants should correspond to the ideal free distribution (IFD). In my thesis I focus on two aspects:  I use game theoretical models to explore, whether those strategies can coexist within species and also whether different species can coexist if they have different strategy. From this model I draw predictions, which I test by meta-analysis.  Using Agrostis stolonifera as a model, I test assumptions on nutrient and neighbour perception, which underlie TOC and IFD models. I show that according to mathematical models, those two strategies can coexist in different species in a community, but cannot coexist within a species. Within a species, the TOC strategy should always dominate, once it appears. This can be extrapolated to macroevolutionary scale - once TOC occurs in certain clade, it should...

There is an increasing concern for the impact of humans on the environment. Traditionally, ecological models consider human influence as a constant or linearly varying parameter, whereas socioeconomic models and frameworks tend to oversimplify the ecological system. But tackling complex environmental challenges faced by our societies requires interdisciplinary approaches due to the intricate feedbacks between the socioeconomic and ecological systems involved. Thus, models of social-ecological systems couple an ecological system with a socioeconomic system to investigate their interaction in the integrated dynamical system. We define this coupling formally and apply the social-ecological approach to three ecological cases. Indeed, we focus on eutrophication in shallow freshwater lakes, which is a well-known system showing bistability between a clear water state and a turbid polluted state. We also study a model accounting for an aquifer (water stock) and a model accounting for a biotic population exhibiting bistability through an Allee effect. The socioeconomic dynamics is driven by the incentive that agents feel to act in a desirable or undesirable way. This incentive can be represented by a difference in utility, or in payoff, between two strategies that each agent can adopt: agents can cooperate and act in an environment-friendly way, or they can defect and act in an ecologically undesirable way. The agents' motivation includes such factors as the economic cost of their choice, the concern they feel for the environment and conformism to the collective attitude of the human group. Thus, the incentive to cooperate responds to the state of the ecological system and to the agents' collective opinion, and this response can be linear, nonlinear and monotonic, or non-monotonic. When investigating the mathematical form of this response, we find that monotonic non-linear responses may result in additional equilibria, cycles and basins of attraction compared to the linear case. Non-monotonic responses, such as resignation effects, may produce much more complicated nullclines such as a closed nullcline and weaken our ability to anticipate the dynamics of a social-ecological system. Regarding the modelling of the socioeconomic subsystem, the replicator dynamics and the logit best-response dynamics are widely used mathematical formulations from evolutionary game theory. There seems to be little awareness about the impact of choosing one or the other. The replicator dynamics assumes that the socioeconomic subsystem is stationary when all agents adopt the same behaviour, whereas the best-response dynamics assumes that this situation is not stationary. The replicator dynamics has formal game theoretical foundations, whereas best-response dynamics comes from psychology. Recent experiments found that the best-response dynamics explains empirical data better. We find that the two dynamics can produce a different number of equilibria as well as differences in their stability. The replicator dynamics is a limit case of the logit best-response dynamics when agents have an infinite rationality. We show that even generic social-ecological models can show multistability. In many cases, multistability allows for counterintuitive equilibria to emerge, where ecological desirability and socioeconomic desirability are not correlated. This makes generic management recommendations difficult to find and several policies with and without socioeconomic impact should be considered. Even in cases where there is a unique equilibrium, it can lose stability and give rise to sustained oscillations. We can interpret these oscillations in a way similar to the cycles found in classical predator-prey systems. In the lake pollution social-ecological model for instance, the agents' defection increases the lake pollution, which makes agents feel concerned and convince the majority to cooperate. Then, the ecological concern decreases because the lake is not polluted and the incentive to cooperate plummets, so that it becomes more advantageous for the agents to defect again. We show that the oscillations obtained when using the replicator dynamics tend to produce a make-or-break dynamics, where a random perturbation could shift the system to either full cooperation or full defection depending on its timing along the cycle. Management measures may shift the location of the social-ecological system at equilibrium, but also make attractors appear or disappear in the phase plane or change the resilience of stable steady states. The resilience of equilibria relates to basins of attraction and is especially important in the face of potential regime shifts. Sources of uncertainty that should be taken into account for the management of social-ecological systems include multistability and the possibility of counterintuitive equilibria, the wide range of possible policy measures with or without socioeconomic interventions, and the behaviour of human collectives involved, which may be described by different dynamics. Yet, uncertainty coming from the collective behaviour of agents is mitigated if they do not give up or rely on the other agents' efforts, which allows modelling to better inform decision makers.