315,373 research outputs found
Assortative Mixing Equilibria in Social Network Games
It is known that individuals in social networks tend to exhibit homophily
(a.k.a. assortative mixing) in their social ties, which implies that they
prefer bonding with others of their own kind. But what are the reasons for this
phenomenon? Is it that such relations are more convenient and easier to
maintain? Or are there also some more tangible benefits to be gained from this
collective behaviour?
The current work takes a game-theoretic perspective on this phenomenon, and
studies the conditions under which different assortative mixing strategies lead
to equilibrium in an evolving social network. We focus on a biased preferential
attachment model where the strategy of each group (e.g., political or social
minority) determines the level of bias of its members toward other group
members and non-members. Our first result is that if the utility function that
the group attempts to maximize is the degree centrality of the group,
interpreted as the sum of degrees of the group members in the network, then the
only strategy achieving Nash equilibrium is a perfect homophily, which implies
that cooperation with other groups is harmful to this utility function. A
second, and perhaps more surprising, result is that if a reward for inter-group
cooperation is added to the utility function (e.g., externally enforced by an
authority as a regulation), then there are only two possible equilibria,
namely, perfect homophily or perfect heterophily, and it is possible to
characterize their feasibility spaces. Interestingly, these results hold
regardless of the minority-majority ratio in the population.
We believe that these results, as well as the game-theoretic perspective
presented herein, may contribute to a better understanding of the forces that
shape the groups and communities of our society
Is altruism bad for cooperation?
Some philosophers and social scientists have stressed the importance for good government of an altruistic citizenry that values the well being of one another. Others have emphasized the need for incentives that induce even the self interested to contribute to the public good. Implicitly most have assumed that these two approaches are complementary or at worst additive. But this need not be the case. Behavioral experiments find that if reciprocity-minded subjects feel hostility towards free riders and enjoy inflicting harm on them, near efficient levels of contributions to a public good may be supported when group members have opportunities to punish low contributors. Cooperation may also be supported if individuals are sufficiently altruistic that they internalize the group benefits that their contributions produce. Using a utility function embodying both reciprocity and altruism we show that unconditional altruism towards other members attenuates the punishment motive and thus may reduce the level of punishment inflicted on defectors, resulting in lower rather than higher levels of contributions. Increases in altruism may also reduce the level of benefits from the public project net of contribution costs and punishment costs. The negative effect of altruism on cooperation and material payoffs is greater the stronger is the reciprocity motive among the members. JEL Categories: D64 (altruism); H41 (public goods)public goods, altruism, spite, reciprocity, punishment, cooperation
Individual Motivation, its Nature, Determinants and Consequences for Within Group Behavior
The paper deals with evaluating the adequacy of the assumption that in economic transactions people are self-interested insofar as they are motivated solely by the concern of maximizing their own utility, and in particular with assessing how this assumption affects within-group behavior. Policy and incentive structures based on the assumption of exogenous and self-interested motivation can undermine other sources of motivation and have negative effects both on cooperative behavior and also on economic efficiency. The paper sketches the motivational assumption of homo Ćconomicus: in the classical formulation, in rational choice theory and in Beckerâs later work which introduces personal and social capital into the individual utility function. It then challenges the position that homo Ćconomicus contains an adequate characterization of human motivation for cooperative within-group behavior. It introduces alternative motivational behaviors: philia and altruism, identity and self-expression, moral rules, intrinsic motivation and social norms. It argues that motivations are complex and multiple; a single assumption of utility maximization is insufficient for policy purposes. As the individual is always a social being, how she behaves will be dependent on the social context in which she is acting. If motivations are endogenous, and if under certain conditions maximizing motivation displaces other sources of motivation, then these indirect effects, and their long term consequences for efficiency and equity, should be taken into account in framing economic policies.Motivation; Rational Choice; Self-Interest; Cooperation
Hierarchical Cooperation for Operator-Controlled Device-to-Device Communications: A Layered Coalitional Game Approach
Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, which allow direct communication among
mobile devices, have been proposed as an enabler of local services in 3GPP
LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) cellular networks. This work investigates a hierarchical
LTE-A network framework consisting of multiple D2D operators at the upper layer
and a group of devices at the lower layer. We propose a cooperative model that
allows the operators to improve their utility in terms of revenue by sharing
their devices, and the devices to improve their payoff in terms of end-to-end
throughput by collaboratively performing multi-path routing. To help
understanding the interaction among operators and devices, we present a
game-theoretic framework to model the cooperation behavior, and further, we
propose a layered coalitional game (LCG) to address the decision making
problems among them. Specifically, the cooperation of operators is modeled as
an overlapping coalition formation game (CFG) in a partition form, in which
operators should form a stable coalitional structure. Moreover, the cooperation
of devices is modeled as a coalitional graphical game (CGG), in which devices
establish links among each other to form a stable network structure for
multi-path routing.We adopt the extended recursive core, and Nash network, as
the stability concept for the proposed CFG and CGG, respectively. Numerical
results demonstrate that the proposed LCG yields notable gains compared to both
the non-cooperative case and a LCG variant and achieves good convergence speed.Comment: IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference 201
Cooperative Local Caching under Heterogeneous File Preferences
Local caching is an effective scheme for leveraging the memory of the mobile
terminal (MT) and short range communications to save the bandwidth usage and
reduce the download delay in the cellular communication system. Specifically,
the MTs first cache in their local memories in off-peak hours and then exchange
the requested files with each other in the vicinity during peak hours. However,
prior works largely overlook MTs' heterogeneity in file preferences and their
selfish behaviours. In this paper, we practically categorize the MTs into
different interest groups according to the MTs' preferences. Each group of MTs
aims to increase the probability of successful file discovery from the
neighbouring MTs (from the same or different groups). Hence, we define the
groups' utilities as the probability of successfully discovering the file in
the neighbouring MTs, which should be maximized by deciding the caching
strategies of different groups. By modelling MTs' mobilities as homogeneous
Poisson point processes (HPPPs), we analytically characterize MTs' utilities in
closed-form. We first consider the fully cooperative case where a centralizer
helps all groups to make caching decisions. We formulate the problem as a
weighted-sum utility maximization problem, through which the maximum utility
trade-offs of different groups are characterized. Next, we study two benchmark
cases under selfish caching, namely, partial and no cooperation, with and
without inter-group file sharing, respectively. The optimal caching
distributions for these two cases are derived. Finally, numerical examples are
presented to compare the utilities under different cases and show the
effectiveness of the fully cooperative local caching compared to the two
benchmark cases
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