Detail

Evolutionary dynamics of collective action

Throughout their life, humans often engage in collective endeavors ranging from family related issues to global warming. In all cases, the tragedy of the commons threatens the possibility of reaching the optimal solution associated with global cooperation, a scenario predicted by theory and demonstrated by many experiments. From a theoretical point of view, Life is often a matter of payoffs, fitness and competition, just like a game, which makes (evolutionary) game theory one of the best tools to study conflicts of interest in populations of different types and at all scales. In this framework, I will address two important aspects of evolutionary dynamics that have been neglected so far in the context of public goods games and evolution of cooperation. On one hand, the fact that often there is a threshold above which a public good is reached. On the other hand, the fact that individuals often participate in several games, related to the their social context and pattern of social ties, defined by a social network. In the first case, the existence of a threshold dictates a rich pattern of evolutionary dynamics where the direction of natural selection can be inverted compared to standard expectations. In networked games, cooperation blooms whenever the act of contributing is more important than the effort contributed. This enhancement is particularly strong when both wealth and social ties follow a power-law distribution, providing clues on the self-organization of social communities and their economical implications.