The evolution of cheating in asymmetric contests

Abstract

"Consider a society where all agents initially play ""fair"" and one agent invents a ""cheating"" strategy such as doping in sports. Whichnfactors determine the success of the new cheating strategy? In order to study this question we consider an evolutionary game with local information. Three factors determine the imitation dynamics of thenmodel: the location and the type of the innovator, the distribution of types, and the information available to the agents. In particular wenfind that the economy is more likely to end up in a state where all agents cheat if the innovator is of low type or when the agents arenmaximally segregated.