Emergence and Collapse of Peace with Friend Selection Strategies

A society consisting of agents who can freely choose to attack or not to attack others inevitably evolves into a battling society (a \'war of all against all\'). We investigated whether strategies based on C. Schmitt\'s concept of the political, the distinction of a friend and an enemy, lead to the emergence and collapse of social order. Especially, we propose \'friend selection strategies\' (FSSs), one of which we called the \'us-TFT\' (tit for tat) strategy, which requires an agent to regard one who did not attack him or his \'friends\' as a \'friend\'. We carried out evolutionary simulations on an artificial society consisting of FSS agents. As a result, we found that the us-TFT results in a peaceful society with the emergence of an us-TFT community. In addition, we found that the collapse of a peaceful society is triggered by another FSS strategy called a \'coward\'.Community, Carl Schmitt, a Friend and an Enemy, Tit for Tat, Coward, Evolutionary Simulation

Meta-Communication and Market Dynamics. Reflexive Interactions of Financial Markets and the Mass Media

A widely held belief in financial economics suggests that stock prices always adequately reflect all available information. Price movements away from fundamentals are assumed to occur only infrequently, if at all. „False“ prices are supposed to be corrected by the counter-actions of „rational“ investors reestablishing equilibrium. However, empirical evidence of widespread irrationality among investors as well as theoretical insights into the properties of complex systems suggest that this view is too static. In fact, it can be shown that under certain conditions dynamic disequilibria have a considerable probability of being „locked in“. The mass media play no mean role in this: By conditioning trend-following behavior and fostering coordination among large numbers of investors, the media can help bring about such destabilizing moves. Media attention can induce positive feedback by increasing the level of excess noise in the market while decreasing the number of perceived behavioral options. Meta-communication thus generated is a prime source of instability in financial markets.

Formal and Informal Institutional Change : the Experience of Postsocialist Transformation

Diversity of trajectories of post-socialist transforming economies is a stylized fact of this experience of system change. The paper explores the relations between change in formal and informal rules in historical perspective, discussing new institutional views about rationality of formal institutions and detrimental inertia of informal institutions. It submits that an open and complex approach of the centrality of formal/informal rules interaction may give a better explanation to the multiplicity of national post-socialist pathways.Post-socialist transformation ; diversity of trajectories ; institutional change ; formal rules ; informal rules ; enforcement

Establishing norms with metanorms in distributed computational systems

Norms provide a valuable mechanism for establishing coherent cooperative behaviour in decentralised systems in which there is no central authority. One of the most influential formulations of norm emergence was proposed by Axelrod (Am Political Sci Rev 80(4):1095–1111, 1986). This paper provides an empirical analysis of aspects of Axelrod’s approach, by exploring some of the key assumptions made in previous evaluations of the model. We explore the dynamics of norm emergence and the occurrence of norm collapse when applying the model over extended durations . It is this phenomenon of norm collapse that can motivate the emergence of a central authority to enforce laws and so preserve the norms, rather than relying on individuals to punish defection. Our findings identify characteristics that significantly influence norm establishment using Axelrod’s formulation, but are likely to be of importance for norm establishment more generally. Moreover, Axelrod’s model suffers from significant limitations in assuming that private strategies of individuals are available to others, and that agents are omniscient in being aware of all norm violations and punishments. Because this is an unreasonable expectation , the approach does not lend itself to modelling real-world systems such as online networks or electronic markets. In response, the paper proposes alternatives to Axelrod’s model, by replacing the evolutionary approach, enabling agents to learn, and by restricting the metapunishment of agents to cases where the original defection is observed, in order to be able to apply the model to real-world domains . This work can also help explain the formation of a “social contract” to legitimate enforcement by a central authority

From Wild West to the Godfather: Enforcement Market Structure

Weak states enable private enforcement but it does not always fade away in the presence of strong states. We develop a general equilibrium model of the market organization of enforcers (self-enforcers, competitive specialized enforcers or monopoly) who defend endowments from predators. We provide conditions under which a Mafia emerges, persists and is stable. Mafias are most likely to emerge at intermediate stages of economic development. Private enforcers might provide better enforcement to the rich than would a welfare-maximizing state - hence the State may find it difficult to replace the Mafia or competitive private enforcers.

Inequity and Inequality in the Emergence of Conventions

Many societies have state norms of equity---that those who make symmetric social contributions deserve symmetric rewards. Despite this, there are widespread patterns of social inequity, especially along gender and racial lines. It is often the case that members of certain social groups receive greater rewards per contribution than others. In this paper, we draw on evolutionary game theory to show that the emergence of this sort of inequitable convention is far from surprising. In simple cultural evolutionary models, inequity is much more likely to emerge than equity, despite the presence of stable, equitable outcomes that groups might instead learn. As we outline, social groups provide a way to break symmetry between actors in determining both contributions and rewards in joint projects

Systems of innovation

We review the literature on national innovation systems. We first focus on the emergence of the concept of innovation systems, reviewing its historical origins and three main flavours (associated to three “founding fathers†of the concept). After this, we discuss how the notion of innovation systems filled a need for providing a broader basis for innovation policy. We conclude with some perspectives on the future of the innovation systems literature.