BIRS Workshop Evolutionary Games

S (in alphabetic order by speaker surname) Speaker: Tibor Antal (Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, 1 Brattle Square, Suite 6, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. E-mail: [email protected]) Title: Who laughs last? Perturbation theory for games Abstract: Evolutionary game theory studies frequency dependent selection. The fitness of a strategy is not constant, but depends on the relative abundances (=frequencies) of strategies in the population. The main question is which strategy is the most abundant in the long run. When the effect of selection is sufficiently weak, we can answer this question by developing a perturbation theory. The method is quite general, and easily applicable to a large class of models. First we consider the simplest possible example of a well mixed population, then we turn to more general cases, including games with multiple strategies and games in structured populations. Speaker: Joe Apaloo (Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, B2G 2W5, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]) Title: Multi-dimensional evolutionary game theory: a current state Abstract: The mathematical theory for describing the eventual outcomes of evolutionary games involving single species and one-dimensional strategies drawn from a continuous strategy set is well established. One aspect of this theory is the connection between static evolutionary stability criteria and the outcome of dynamic evolutionary models. There is limited work in the literature on extending the connections between static stability criteria and the outcomes of dynamic evolutionary models to the multi-dimensional case. We review the current state of these connections and generate discussion on possible ways of extending research work in this area of multi-dimensional evolutionary models. Speaker: Ulrich Berger (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics Business Administration, Augasse 2-6, 1090 Wien, Austria. E-mail: [email protected]) Title: Learning to cooperate via indirect reciprocity Abstract: Cooperating in the Prisoners Dilemma is irrational and some supporting mechanism is needed to stabilize cooperation. Indirect reciprocity based on reputation is one such mechanism. Assessing an individuals reputation requires first-order information, i.e. knowledge about its previous behavior, as it is utilized under image scoring. But there seems to be an agreement that in order to successfully stabilize cooperation higher-order information is necessary, i.e. knowledge of others previous reputations. We show here that such a conclusion might have been premature. ”Tolerant scoring”, a first-order assessment rule with built-in tolerance against single defections, can lead a society to stable cooperation. Speaker: Ross Cressman (Department of Mathematics, Bricker Academic Building, BA534 Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave. W. Waterloo, ON, N2L 3C5, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]) Title: Game experiments on cooperation through punishment and/or reward