Many interesting behaviours in the animal and human world involve cooperation among
individuals. Yet, cooperating individuals are often susceptible to exploitation by cheaters.
Because cheaters do better than the cooperators they exploit, the evolution and persistence
of cooperation has been a challenging topic of study in biology, sociology and economics.
Studies often abstract from real cooperative interactions, and construct simple games
in which players can choose either cooperation with other players, or defection, e.g., the
well known prisoner’s dilemma and the snowdrift game. In these games and other social
dilemmas, mutual cooperation yields greater payoffs than mutual defection, but individuals
are still tempted to defect (because of the possibility that if they cooperate, the other player
will defect).
Similar dilemmas also arise in situations where multiple individuals may be affected by
the actions of one (such as volunteering for community service or evading taxes), and the
main theme of this thesis is cooperation in groups. In chapter 2, we analyze pre-emptive
vaccination for an outbreak of smallpox (following a bioterrorist attack or accidental release),
from the public health (i.e., group) and individual perspectives. Chapters 3 and 4
deal with an extension of the snowdrift game to n interacting players and continuous strategy
sets (where individuals decide on their degree of cooperation): in chapter 3, we analyze
global evolutionary stability of cooperative strategies in a large class of n-player snowdrift
games in infinite populations; chapter 4 analyzes general continuous n-person snowdrift
games in finite populations, and compares the evolutionary dynamics with their infinite
population analogues. In chapter 5, we present a general framework to model selection
processes in finite populations, necessary for the analysis in chapter 4. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/18951 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Molina, Chai |
| Contributors | Earn, David, Mathematics and Statistics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds