Cooperation in co-evolving networks: The prisoner's dilemma and stag-hunt games

Abstract

Interactions giving rise to dilemmas are widespread in society. Starting from the observation that individuals interact through networks of acquaintances, we study the co-evolution of the agents' strategies and of the social network itself using two prototypical games: the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Stag Hunt. We find that cooperation and coordination can be achieved through the self-organization of the social network into strong and stable clusters of identical strategies. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.