Punishing and abstaining for public goods
- *Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, A-1090 Vienna, Austria; †Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; and ‡Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna, Austria and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Abstract
The evolution of cooperation within sizable groups of nonrelated humans offers many challenges for our understanding. Current research has highlighted two factors boosting cooperation in public goods interactions, namely, costly punishment of defectors and the option to abstain from the joint enterprise. A recent modeling approach has suggested that the autarkic option acts as a catalyzer for the ultimate fixation of altruistic punishment. We present an alternative, more microeconomically based model that yields a bistable outcome instead. Evolutionary dynamics can lead either to a Nash equilibrium of punishing and nonpunishing cooperators or to an oscillating state without punishers.
Footnotes
- § To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: karl.sigmund{at}univie.ac.at.
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Author contributions: H.B. and C.H. analyzed data; C.H. performed research; and H.B. and K.S. wrote the paper.
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Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared.
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This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
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Edited by Brian Skyrms, University of California, Irvine, CA
- The National Academy of Sciences
