Sample Questions Week 8

EC II: the evolution of cooperation (Lab: Iterated prisoner’s dilemma)

  1. Game theory, competition and cooperation

Evolutionary game theory predicts some interesting and novel strategies for negotiating with other people. Consider the following version of the chocolate game:

    1. You are enrolled in a subject on Strategic Planning I, and the lecturer assigns 10% of the marks to a strategy game.  In this game, two students are chosen at random, call them Alice and Bob. Alice offers Bob some number of marks, between 0 and 10, say x. If Bob accepts the offer, then Bob gets x marks for the game and Alice gets (10-x). Each student is chosen once to make an offer, and once to receive an offer. In this game, the students must submit their strategy before the game starts.  They don’t know who their strategy will be paired with, and they don’t find out afterwards.  Valid strategies are of the form (S, R) where S and R mean:

Offer strategy: Offer S marks [where 0<=S<=10].

Receipt strategy: Accept if the other person offers more than R [where 0<=R<=10]

 

                                                               i.      What values of S and R are logically likely to get the highest marks?

                                                             ii.      Explain your reasoning

                                                            iii.      What strategies would you submit?

                                                           iv.      Justify your answer.

    1. You are enrolled in Strategic Planning II, and the lecturer now has ethical clearance to publish the strategies for this class. The strategy game consists of multiple rounds of the game (10-20 rounds, depending on the whim of the lecturer).  The first round is similar to part A, but a list of each person and their (S, R) strategy is published for the first and subsequent rounds, and you get a chance to change your strategy before each round.  For the second and subsequent rounds, you know who your partners in the game will be and can look up their previous strategies.

                                                               i.      How would you design your strategies in this game?

                                                             ii.      Does the situation change the strategy likely to get the most marks?

                                                            iii.      Explain your answer.

 

 

  1. Define ESS and Evolutionary stable state.
  2. Describe the Hawk-dove game