Altruistic Versus Egoistic Behavior in a Public Good Game

Matros, Alexander (2012) Altruistic Versus Egoistic Behavior in a Public Good Game. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 36 (4). pp. 642-656. ISSN 0165-1889

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Abstract

This paper analyzes an evolutionary version of the Public Good game in which boundedly rational agents can use imitation and best-reply decision rules. Several possibilities for both decision rules to be present in the population are considered. I show that altruistic behavior might survive if switching between the decision rules occurs less often than the probabilities of errors in choosing a strategy and if local neighborhoods are not too small or too large.