Cost Of Cooperation Research Articles

Trajectory optimization for data retrieval applications: it is all about where/who loads the mule

This work analyses the problem of data collection in sensor networks with disconnected clusters of sensors leveraging autonomous vehicles and intra-cluster sensor cooperation. The later allows for the vehicle's trajectory to be planned in terms of visiting each cluster instead of visiting individual sensors with important repercussions on the computational complexity of the problem. This paper proposes a dynamic programming methodology to solve the data collection problem in optimal time assuming that the cost of sensor cooperation is negligible. Our approach is novel in that it considers (i) intra-cluster cooperation, allowing communication to a subset of the nodes in each cluster, (ii) a communication rate to each cluster depends on the location of the vehicle, i.e., the data acquisition rate is state dependent, and (iii) that the amount of information to be collected on each sensor cluster may be either known or unknown in advance. Although the problem is cast in the context of data collection in a set of isolated sensor networks, the developed methodology may be used in other applications of resource acquisition or consumption. Simulation results are provided for data collection scenarios with 3 sensor clusters.

Interaction between Dutch Soccer Teams and Fans: A Mathematical Analysis through Cooperative Game Theory

Inspired by the first lustrum of the Club Positioning Matrix (CPM) for professional Dutch soccer teams, we model the interaction between soccer teams and their potential fans as a cooperative cost game based on the annual voluntary sponsorships of fans in order to validate their fan registration in a central database. We introduce a natural cost allocation to the soccer teams, based in a natural manner on the sponsorships of fans. The game theoretic approach is twofold. On the one hand, an appropriate cost game called “fan data cost game” is developed and on the other, it is shown that the former natural cost allocation agrees with the solution concept called “nucleolus” of the fan data cost game.

The dampening effect of bank foreign liabilities on monetary policy: Revisiting monetary cooperation in East Asia

This paper addresses the cost of formal monetary cooperation from the perspective of monetary policy effectiveness. As banks tend to borrow from abroad in foreign currencies to fund domestic lending, monetary policy may have a reduced effect on the credit market and the economy. Results derived from bank level data in East Asia indicate that bank foreign liabilities significantly reduce the effectiveness of the credit channel of monetary policy, implying a relatively low cost of giving up monetary autonomy.

A cooperative virulence plasmid imposes a high fitness cost under conditions that induce pathogenesis.

Harbouring a plasmid often imposes a fitness cost on the bacterial host. Motivated by implications for public health, the majority of studies on plasmid cost are focused on elements that impart antibiotic resistance. Plasmids, however, can provide a wide range of ecologically important phenotypes to their bacterial hosts-such as virulence, specialized catabolism and metal resistance. The Agrobacterium tumefaciens tumour-inducing (Ti) plasmid confers both the ability to infect dicotyledonous plants and to catabolize the metabolites that plants produce as a result of being infected. We demonstrate that this virulence and catabolic plasmid imposes a measurable fitness cost on host cells under resource-limiting, but not resource replete, environmental conditions. Additionally, we show that the expression of Ti-plasmid-borne pathogenesis genes necessary to initiate cooperative pathogenesis is extremely costly to the host cell. The benefits of agrobacterial pathogenesis stem from the catabolism of public goods produced by infected host plants. Thus, the virulence-plasmid-dependent costs we demonstrate constitute costs of cooperation typically associated with the ability to garner the benefits of cooperation. Interestingly, genotypes that harbour derived opine catabolic plasmids minimize this trade-off, and are thus able to freeload upon the pathogenesis initiated by other individuals.

National Parliaments as New Actors in the Decision-making Process at the European Level

National parliaments have two basic ways of influencing the outcomes of the European decision-making process. First, they influence national input legitimacy at the national level on European issues through influencing and controlling their respective national governments. Second, they influence national input legitimacy at the European level on European issues through directly entering into the European decision-making and interacting with the European institutions participating in it. To be able to make use of this second possibility, national parliaments have to devise instruments of cooperation and coordination and learn to use them effectively. The first steps have already been made: national parliaments exchange information on their scrutiny of European legislation and other activities through their permanent representatives in Brussels, the IPEX database and other channels. This article examines the cooperation, or, at least, information exchange among national parliaments on a number of legislative proposals - those chosen for coordinated tests of subsidiarity by national parliaments themselves, those most voted on in the Council of the European Union (EU) and those subjected to three readings in the co-decision procedure - discussed between May 2004 and the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. It shows that national parliaments face difficulties caused by the high costs of such cooperation, including the need for flexibility and speed of their own decision-making, as well as administrative costs, whilst they increasingly use the cooperation channels available to them.

Green-beard effect predicts the evolution of traitorousness in the two-tag Prisoner's dilemma

Cooperation, a costly interaction in which individuals benefit one another, plays a crucial role in many of the major transitions of evolution. Yet, as illustrated by the Prisoner's dilemma, cooperative systems are fragile because cooperators can be exploited by defectors who reap the benefits of cooperation but do not reciprocate. This barrier to cooperation may be overcome if cooperators have a recognisable phenotypic tag that allows them to adopt the conditional strategy of cooperating with fellow tag-mates while defecting against others, a mechanism known as the ‘green-beard effect’. The resulting intra-tag cooperator strategy is particularly effective in structured populations where local clumps of cooperative tag-mates can find refuge. While intra-tag cooperation is robust against unconditional defectors in the spatial Prisoner's dilemma (at least when the cost of cooperation is low), the role of extra-tag cooperators – individuals who cooperate only with those bearing a different tag – has received little attention, despite the fact that these traitors form mixed-tag aggregations whose heterogeneous makeup potentially allows the exploitation of multiple other strategies. Using a spatial model of the two-tag Prisoner's dilemma, I show that extra-tag cooperation readily evolves under low to intermediate cost−benefit ratios of mutual cooperation ( r). Specifically, at low r, mixed-tag aggregations of extra-tag cooperators take over the population, while at intermediate r, such aggregations coexist with intra-tag cooperators and unconditional defectors with whom they engage in non-transitive spatial invasibility. In systems with more than two tags, however, the dilution of extra-tag cooperators within mixed-tag aggregations prevents the strategy from being effective. Thus, the same beard chromodynamics that promotes within-group cooperation also predicts the evolution of traitorous between-group cooperation, but only when the number of beard colours is low.

Fear and Instrumentalism: Australian Policy Responses to Migration from the Global South

Immigration and border protection policies are driven by national interest. However, the national interest can be more broadly and more narrowly conceived, depending in part on the degree to which the future of the individual state is understood to be contingent on a shared global future and on the recognition that the short-term costs of international cooperation may bring long-term collective benefits. Whereas such global interdependence is recognised in international statecraft in the domains of aid, trade and climate change, such recognition does not extend to immigration. Australia's national policies towards human movement from the Global South tend to be driven in large part by exaggerated fears (of unregulated border crossings) or a narrowly instrumental approach to the economic benefits of human capital transfers (migrants filling skills gaps and providing flexibility in the labour market). A broader conception of migration would take into account the potential developmental benefits of human movement for source nations and for migrants themselves.

Domestic reform as a rationale for gradualism in international cooperation

Gradualism is common in international cooperation, as states begin with limited cooperation and choose more ambitious targets slowly over time. However, most models of international cooperation are static and thus cannot explain gradualism. I show that when states can implement domestic reforms to reduce the cost of international cooperation, enforcement concerns prompt gradualism. First, to achieve ambitious international cooperation, states must internationally enforce costly domestic reform. Second, defection at the reform stage is particularly pernicious. When other states reform, their ability to punish the defector by suspending cooperation is reduced. States choose the extent of reform to maximize the benefits of expected international cooperation in the future. As collective enforcement power increases or the number of states decreases, the extent and pace of reform increase. Gradualism is also most probable in international public good provision because excludable benefits mitigate enforcement problems.

Comments on: Cooperative games and cost allocation problems

The area of game theoretic models of cost allocation problems is a very large one and the authors have made the, in my eyes wise, choice to highlight a few areas of application. The paper provides an excellent overview of applications of game theory to the areas of transportation, natural resources, and the power industry, and it includes a wealth of references. Rather than trying to add to this overview or discussing other areas of application, I address the more general issues of why one might want to use cooperative games to study cost allocation problems and what we can learn from using cooperative games in such problems.

Comments on: Cooperative games and cost allocation problems

The role of cooperative game theory within economic theory seems to be smaller than the impact of other areas within game theory, at least up to now. Obviously, one reason for this is the simple fact that there is a larger worldwide tradition of doing research in a noncooperative setting. Moreover, it seems to be easier to provide a detailed description of a noncooperative model by specifying formally the strategic possibilities of all agents involved, whereas the concept of ‘cooperation’ is harder to control. Cooperative models usually focus on (variants of) the rather simple model of TU games, where the cooperation possibilities of a coalition are summarized in one single (monetary) value.

Rejoinder on: Cooperative games and cost allocation problems

We thank the four discussants for their comments. All of them contribute to explain better certain aspects of our paper and consider very important issues regarding the research on game theory (or game science, which is probably a more accurate name for the discipline). The discussants write about the differences between cooperative and non-cooperative game models, about why game theory is a useful tool to deal with cost allocation situations, about what is the actual potential of game theory to solve real-world relevant problems, and about what is the essential nature of mathematics (and of game theory, since it is a mathematical discipline). The four discussions are a very insightful complement to our manuscript and an excellent collection of brief essays on what (cooperative) game theory is trying to accomplish.

Comments on: Cooperative games and cost allocation problems

When looking at the relation of game theory with the “real world”, many game theorists are not fully convinced. Cicero’s words describe accurately the cause of this discomfort, since according to a widespread opinion the purpose of science is to develop practical applications. The survey of Fiestras-Janeiro, Garcia Jurado and Mosquera includes an excellent collection of such practical applications of game theory.

Comment on: Cooperative games and cost allocation problems

I have appreciated the effort done by the authors to collect many examples in which game theoretic methods are applied to cost allocation problems. More precisely, as stated in the title, only the use of cooperative games (specifically: TU-games) has been considered. As said by the authors, the analysis has been restricted to just three different fields, which is enough to provide already a rich family of examples. I would say that such a restriction has been useful to offer a view of the subject which I believe is more effective than if a much more wide range of fields of application had been considered. I agree also with the idea of going in some depth for one single contribution (and maybe strictly related papers) for each field: this helps the non-expert reader to get a flavor of the techniques that are used, respecting space constraints.

NGO monitoring and the legitimacy of international cooperation: A strategic analysis

States often invite NGOs to monitor international cooperation. Under what circumstances are states likely to take this step? We argue that NGO monitoring allows states to provide domestic publics with credible evidence regarding successful cooperation, but that this credibility carries a cost: if states fail to cooperate, a participating NGO will expose this failure and thus delegitimize the cooperation effort. Our formal analysis indicates that states obtain a dual benefit from NGO participation: in addition to enhanced legitimacy, NGO scrutiny helps states credibly commit to high cooperation levels vis-a-vis each other. The increased costs of failure, however, may deter state use of NGO monitoring. Surprisingly, we find that NGO monitoring is the most useful for states when the cooperation cost is relatively low. We explore the empirical relevance of our theoretical argument in NGO monitoring of World Bank development projects and compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. We also explain why NGO monitoring has been disallowed in the Global Environment Facility. Our analysis provides a firm strategic foundation for the idea that NGO participation sometimes confers benefits to states, and our theory has several empirically falsifiable implications.

Cost and inventory benefits of cooperation in multi-period and multi-product supply

Cooperation among supply chain members, both horizontally and vertically, has become the norm in practice. Unlike traditional supply chains with members competing to reduce their individual costs, the overall cost of the entire supply chain is minimized in a cooperative supply chain. The savings from cooperation may be shared among the members, while a lower average cost and a lower cost variation is materialized for individual members. The problem is formulated as an integrated flow network and expanded to multi-period and multi-product, with the possibility of holding inventories in a multi-stage, multi-member cooperative supply chain. Simulation results indicate an approximately 26% reduction in total costs of the supply chain, utilizing this formulation over competitive setups. In a multi-period chain, members may hold an inventory or use an inventory policy. As the holding costs increase, the problem decomposes into a single period (just-in-time) again. The disturbing bullwhip effect disappears in cooperative supply chains.

Cooperation in scale-free networks with limited associative capacities

In this work we study the effect of limiting the number of interactions (the associative capacity) that a node can establish per round of a prisoner's dilemma game. We focus on the way this limitation influences the level of cooperation sustained by scale-free networks. We show that when the game includes cooperation costs, limiting the associative capacity of nodes to a fixed quantity renders in some cases larger values of cooperation than in the unrestricted scenario. This allows one to define an optimum capacity for which cooperation is maximally enhanced. Finally, for the case without cooperation costs, we find that even a tight limitation of the associative capacity of nodes yields the same levels of cooperation as in the original network.

Public Safety through Private Action: An Economic Assessment of BIDS

Private actions to avoid and prevent criminal victimisation and assist public law enforcement are vital inputs into the crime-control process. One form of private action, the business improvement district (BID), appears particularly promising. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by property owners to provide local public goods, usually including public safety. Our analysis of 30 Los Angeles BIDs demonstrates that the social benefits of BID expenditures on security are a large multiple (about 20) of the private expenditures. Crime displacement appears minimal. Crime reduction in the BID areas has been accompanied by a reduction in arrests, suggesting further savings. Given the vital role of private individuals and firms in determining the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and the quality and availability of criminal opportunities, private actions arguably deserve a more central role in the analysis of crime and crime prevention policy. 1 But the leading scholarly commentaries on the crime drop during the 1990s have largely ignored the role of the private sector (Blumstein and Wallman, 2000; Levitt, 2004; Zimring, 2007). The potentially relevant trends include: growing reporting rates; the growing sophistication and use of alarms; monitoring equipment and locks; the considerable increase in the employment of private security guards; and the decline in the use of cash (Cook and MacDonald, 2010). Private actions can be encouraged or discouraged through regulation of the insurance industry, reducing the costs of private co-operation with police and courts, gun control measures, and other means. The justification for such measures is the reasonable presumption that many sorts of private action to avoid, mitigate and respond to crime generate substantial externalities. Business improvement districts (BIDs) are a particularly promising institution for harnessing private action to cost-effective crime control. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by neighbourhood property owners to provide local public goods, including public safety. The organisation has the power to tax all the owners in the district, including those who did not sign the original petition. Previous evaluations of BIDs in Los Angeles (LA) indicate that they are successful in reducing crime rates (Brooks, 2008; MacDonald et al., 2009). We provide a further analysis of the costs and benefits, including the effect on arrests and spillovers, and we estimate a dose‐response

‘From Control & Costs Towards Clarity & Creation’ - A Call for a Shift in Focus in Both Theory and Practice of Interorganizational Relationships

The last few decades, the perception that organizations have about several types of boundaries ‘blurred’: with shared services and outsourcing companies started looking differently at both internal and external organizational boundaries. With offshoring even geographical boundaries became less of a given limitation for organizations. However, one boundary stayed more or less the same: the mental boundary of managers that are responsible for activities that are located outside their organization. In my opinion, still too often, these kind of so called interorganizational relationships (IORs) are being managed in an unproductive way, based on old beliefs and experiences that worked before the time that organizational boundaries were as ‘blurred’ as they are today. Therefore it is time for a shift in the mind of practitioners.When studying existing literature on governance modes, and especially on IORs, it appears that not only practitioners need to reassess their assumptions. Also a lot of researchers could use a wider view on relationships across the boundaries of organizations. In the scientific debate on this topic, researchers appear to have focused more on the way negative behavior can be prevented and controlled, than on ways to stimulate positive behavior by coordination and creating clarity. Furthermore, the focus of scientific contributions so far has been in particular on the cost of cooperation, instead of using a balanced approach that also takes the value creating effect of cooperation into account. Therefore, in my opinion, also theory on this subject could use a shift in focus.This paper is part of a PhD research that aims to contribute to these required shifts in focus in both theory and practice of IORs by creating new insights in the impact of formal control mechanisms on the performance of IORs. In this analysis, attention is being paid to the role of behavior as mediating variable between formal control and performance. In this paper, that is part of the explanatory research phase, the choices that have been made so far regarding the research design are explained. The main objective of this paper is to start a discussion and to gather feedback from fellow researchers.

Transaction Costs, Collective Action and Survival of Heterogeneous Co-management Institutions: Case Study of Forest Management Organisations in West Bengal, India

Cost-effective natural resource management is important for equity and efficiency. Yet transaction costs of cooperation may pose a challenge to heterogeneous co-management institutions. We conducted a survey in seven Forest Protection Committees of West Bengal, India to examine this hypothesis empirically. We find that: (1) among several factors, caste heterogeneity, distance to forest, political heterogeneity, land inequality and trust systematically influence transaction costs and collective action; and (2) robust institutions bear less costs of cooperation. The implication is that transaction costs related to heterogeneity may exert significant influence on successes or failures of co-management.

Symbiotic physiology promotes homeostasis in Daisyworld

A connection is hypothesized between the physiological consequences of mutualistic symbiosis and life's average long-term impact on certain highly biologically conserved environmental variables. This hypothesis is developed analytically and with a variant of the Daisyworld model. Biological homeostasis is frequently effective due to co-ordination between opposing physiological “rein” functions, which buffer an organism in response to an external (often environmental) perturbation. It is proposed that during evolutionary history the pooling of different species' physiological functions in mutualistic symbioses increased the range of suboptimal environmental conditions that could be buffered against—a mutual tolerance benefit sometimes sufficient to outweigh the cost of cooperation. A related argument is that for a small number of biologically-crucial physical variables (i) the difference between organism interiors and the life-environment interface is relatively low, and (ii) the biologically optimum level of that variable is relatively highly conserved across different species. For such variables, symbiosis tends to cause (at a cost) an increase in the number of environmental buffering functions per unit of selection, which in turn biases the overall impact of the biota on the state of the variable towards the biological optimum. When a costly but more temperature-tolerant and physiologically versatile symbiosis between one black (warming) and one white (cooling) “daisy” is added to the (otherwise unaltered) Daisyworld parable, four new results emerge: (1) The extension of habitability to a wider luminosity range, (2) resistance to the impact of “cheater” white daisies with cold optima, that derive short-term benefit from environmental destabilisation, (3) the capacity to maintain residual, oscillatory regulation in response to forcings that change more rapidly than allele frequencies and (crucially) (4) “succession”-type dynamics in which the tolerant symbiosis colonises and to an extent makes habitable an otherwise lifeless environment, but is later displaced by free-living genotypes that have higher local fitness once conditions improve. The final result is arguably analogous to lichen colonisation of the Neoproterozoic land surface, followed by the Phanerozoic rise of vascular plants. Caution is necessary in extrapolating from the Daisyworld parable to real ecology/geochemistry, but sufficiently conserved variables may be water potential, macronutrient stoichiometry and (to a lesser extent) the temperature window for metabolic activity.