Exploring the cooperative regimes in a model of agents without memory or "tags": indirect reciprocity vs. selfish incentives

The self-organization in cooperative regimes in a simple mean-field version of a model based on "selfish" agents which play the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game is studied. The agents have no memory and use strategies not based on direct reciprocity nor 'tags'. Two variables are assigned to each agent $i$ at time $t$, measuring its capital $C(i;t)$ and its probability of cooperation $p(i;t)$. At each time step $t$ a pair of agents interact by playing the PD game. These 2 agents update their probability of cooperation $p(i)$ as follows: they compare the profits they made in this interaction $\delta C(i;t)$ with an estimator $\epsilon(i;t)$ and, if $\delta C(i;t) \ge \epsilon(i;t)$, agent $i$ increases its $p(i;t)$ while if $\delta C(i;t) < \epsilon(i;t)$ the agent decreases $p(i;t)$. The 4!=24 different cases produced by permuting the four Prisoner's Dilemma canonical payoffs 3, 0, 1, and 5 - corresponding,respectively, to $R$ (reward), $S$ (sucker's payoff), $T$ (temptation to defect) and $P$ (punishment) - are analyzed. It turns out that for all these 24 possibilities, after a transient,the system self-organizes into a stationary state with average equilibrium probability of cooperation $\bar{p}_\infty$ = constant $> 0$.Depending on the payoff matrix, there are different equilibrium states characterized by their average probability of cooperation and average equilibrium per-capita-income ($\bar{p}_\infty,\bar{\delta C}_\infty$).Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

The Silent Partner: How the Ford Motor Company Became an Arsenal of Nazism

Corporate responsibility is a popular buzzword in the news today, but the concept itself is hardly novel. In response to a barrage of public criticism, the Ford Motor Company commissioned and published a study of its own activities immediately before and during WWII. The study explores the multifaceted and complicated relationship between the American parent company in Dearborn and the German subsidiary in Cologne. The report\u27s findings, however, are largely inconclusive and in some cases, dangerously misleading. This thesis will seek to establish how, with the consent of Dearborn, the German Ford company became an arsenal for Hitler\u27s march on Europe. This thesis will clarify these murky relationships, and picking up where the Ford internal investigation left off, place them within a framework of corporate accountability and complicity. Ford\u27s development as a transnational entity provides a perfect subject of study to embark on such a project. Many of the major themes of post-World War I Europe – economic stagnation, nationalism, coping with the aftermath of a devastating conflict, and eventually, the rise of authoritarian states – are all present in Ford\u27s German story, and their consequences not only resonate within the fields of American, European, and business history but also that of corporate responsibility. The lessons are still relevant today

War Stories--Defense Spending and the Growth of the Massachusetts Economy

The defense industry has been an integral part of the Massachusetts economy since colonial days, and the Watertown Arsenal and Springfield rifle are virtually synonymous with the capital-intensive arms business of the nineteenth century. But after World War II, here as elsewhere, defense production became far more deeply embedded in the state \u27s division of labor, with the result that today it is hard to tell what is of military origin and what is not: the minicomputer and software industries, in their entirety, are properly viewed as a spin-off from the Cold War and the space race, for example. The region\u27s unique claim on these downstream effects of military spending stems partly from Yankee ingenuity, mostly from a highly developed educational establishment and an influential political delegation to Congress. These institutional matrices are also the chief strongholds of Massachusetts\u27s traditional antimilitary liberalism, an arrangement which gives rise to many paradoxes, but wisdom begins with an appreciation of just how intricate and powerful and resistant to challenge is the military industrial complex itself

Smoke and Mirrors: Gender Representation in North American Tobacco and Alcohol Advertisements Before 1950

Historians looking back at North America in the twentieth century will be hardpressed to reconstruct its cultural dimensions without making reference to liquor, cigarettes, and advertising. In promoting alcohol to women, the purveyors of mass culture eliminated much of the stigma of female alcohol consumption. Tobacco consumption by women did not suffer the disgrace of alcohol, yet it infringed on masculine rituals and spaces. The freedom of women to smoke and drink was an inevitable development of the culture of consumerism. Cigarettes were inexpensive and instantly recognizable as emblems of maturity, rebellion, and liberty; advertisers used images of glamour, wealth, and sophistication to promote public drinking and those of domesticity and companionate marriage to encourage household consumption. For both habits, freedom came to be equated with the use of public space, or more precisely female incursions into male public space.En se penchant sur l’Amérique du Nord du XXe siècle, les historiens auront peine à reconstruire ses dimensions culturelles sans faire référence à l’alcool, à la cigarette et à la publicité. En faisant la promotion de l’alcool auprès des femmes, les pourvoyeurs de culture de masse ont éliminé en bonne partie le stigmate qui pesait sur la consommation d’alcool par les femmes. L’usage du tabac n’a pas subi chez les femmes la même disgrâce que la consommation d’alcool, mais il transgressait toutefois les rituels et l’espace des hommes. Dans la culture du consumérisme, la liberté de fumer et de boire des femmes devenait inévitable. La cigarette était un emblème bon marché et immédiatement reconnaissable de la maturité, de la rébellion et de la liberté. Les annonceurs recouraient au prestige, à la richesse et au raffinement pour promouvoir la consommation d’alcool hors du foyer et faisaient valoir la domesticité et l’union libre pour en encourager la consommation à la maison. Pour les deux habitudes, la liberté a fini par être assimilée à l’utilisation de l’espace public, ou plus précisément, aux incursions des femmes dans l’espace public des hommes

Cooperation and Self-Regulation in a Model of Agents Playing Different Games

A simple model for cooperation between "selfish" agents, which play an extended version of the Prisoner's Dilemma(PD) game, in which they use arbitrary payoffs, is presented and studied. A continuous variable, representing the probability of cooperation, $p_k(t) \in$ [0,1], is assigned to each agent $k$ at time $t$. At each time step $t$ a pair of agents, chosen at random, interact by playing the game. The players update their $p_k(t)$ using a criteria based on the comparison of their utilities with the simplest estimate for expected income. The agents have no memory and use strategies not based on direct reciprocity nor 'tags'. Depending on the payoff matrix, the systems self-organizes - after a transient - into stationary states characterized by their average probability of cooperation $\bar{p}_{eq}$ and average equilibrium per-capita-income $\bar{p}_{eq},\bar{U}_\infty$. It turns out that the model exhibit some results that contradict the intuition. In particular, some games which - {\it a priory}- seems to favor defection most, may produce a relatively high degree of cooperation. Conversely, other games, which one would bet that lead to maximum cooperation, indeed are not the optimal for producing cooperation.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, keybords: Complex adaptive systems, Agent-based models, Social system