The Wisdom of Networked Evolving Agents

The fact that selfish behavior may not achieve full efficiency at the collective level has been well also known in the literature. Therefore we need to cope with the socio-economic system by attempting to stack the deck in such a way that individuals with selfish incentives have to do what is the desirable thing. Of particular interests is the question how social interactions can be restructured so that agents are free to choose their own actions while avoiding outcomes that none would have chosen. In this paper, we study the collective construction process of social norms by networking evolving agents. Social norms are here treated as emerged behavioral rules that constitute constraints on social interactions so that they can achieve efficient and equitable outcomes.