Abstract
Public goods games (PGGs) represent one of the most useful tools to study group interactions. However, even if they could provide an explanation for the emergence and stability of cooperation in modern societies, they are not able to reproduce some key features observed in social and economical interactions. The typical shape of wealth distribution—known as Pareto Law—and the microscopic organization of wealth production are two of them. Here, we introduce a modification to the classical formulation of PGGs that allows for the emergence of both of these features from first principles. Unlike traditional PGGs, where players contribute equally to all the games in which they participate, we allow individuals to redistribute their contribution according to what they earned in previous rounds. Results from numerical simulations show that not only a Pareto distribution for the pay-offs naturally emerges but also that if players do not invest enough in one round they can act as defectors even if they are formally cooperators. Our results not only give an explanation for wealth heterogeneity observed in real data but also point to a conceptual change on cooperation in collective dilemmas.
Highlights
One of the key elements of human and animal societies is the interaction between groups of individuals to achieve a common goal
Individuals has always attracted the attention of scientists from very different fields, ranging 2 from biology [1] and sociology [2,3] to economics [4,5]. Scientists have tackled this problem using the tools offered by evolutionary game theory [6,7,8,9], using among others, public goods games (PGGs) [10,11,12,13]
PGGs are usually employed to model the behaviour of groups of individuals achieving a common goal
Summary
One of the key elements of human and animal societies is the interaction between groups of individuals to achieve a common goal. PGGs are usually employed to model the behaviour of groups of individuals achieving a common goal. A typical example are storekeepers with shops in the same street. They can collaborate, i.e. invest some money, in improving the street—more parking slots, better lighting, etc.—to get benefits that will be shared by all the stores: i.e. more customers circulating in the street. Some of them can decide not to contribute to the improvements, saving some money while sharing all the same part of the added value created by the community
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
