The Role of Opportunistic Punishment in the Evolution of Cooperation: An application of stochastic dynamics to public good game

This paper discusses the role of opportunistic punisher who may act selfishly to free-ride cooperators or not to be exploited by defectors. To consider opportunistic punisher, we make a change to the sequence of one-shot public good game; instead of putting action choice first before punishment, the commitment of punishment is declared first before choosing the action of each participant. In this commitment-first setting, punisher may use information about her team, and may defect to increase her fitness in the team. Reversing sequence of public good game can induce different behavior of punisher, which cannot be considered in standard setting where punisher always chooses cooperation. Based on stochastic dynamics developed by evolutionary economists and biologists, we show that opportunistic punisher can make cooperation evolve where cooperative punisher fails. This alternative route for the evolution of cooperation relies paradoxically on the players’ selfishness to profit from others’ unconditional cooperation and defection.