Discreet investors exert greater influence on cooperation in the public goods game

This paper studies the evolutionary process of cooperative behavior in a public goods game model with heterogeneous investment strategies in square lattices.In the proposed model,players are divided into defectors,cooperators and discreet investors.Among these,defectors do not participate in investing,discreet investors make heterogeneous investments based on the investment behavior and cooperation value of their neighbors,and cooperators invest equally in each neighbor.In real life,heterogeneous investment is often accompanied by time or economic costs.The discreet investors in this paper pay a certain price to obtain their neighbors'investment behavior and cooperation value,which quantifies the time and economic costs of the heterogeneous investment process.The results of Monte Carlo simulation experiments in this study show that discreet investors can effectively resist the invasion of the defectors,form a stable cooperative group and expand the cooperative advantage in evolution.However,when discreet investors pay too high a price,they lose their strategic advantage.The results in this paper help us understand the role of heterogeneous investment in promoting and maintaining human social cooperation.

Effect of distribution of fines on evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods game

In the realm of public goods game,punishment,as a potent tool,stands out for fostering cooperation.While it effectively addresses the first-order free-rider problem,the associated costs can be substantial.Punishers incur expenses in imposing sanctions,while defectors face fines.Unfortunately,these monetary elements seemingly vanish into thin air,representing a loss to the system itself.However,by virtue of the redistribution of fines to cooperators and punishers,not only can we mitigate this loss,but the rewards for these cooperative individuals can be enhanced.Based upon this premise,this paper introduces a fine distribution mechanism to the traditional pool punishment model.Under identical parameter settings,by conducting a comparative experiment with the conventional punishment model,the paper aims to investigate the impact of fine distribution on the evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods game.The experimental results clearly demonstrate that,in instances where the punishment cost is prohibitively high,the cooperative strategies of the traditional pool punishment model may completely collapse.However,the model enriched with fine distribution manages to sustain a considerable number of cooperative strategies,thus highlighting its effectiveness in promoting and preserving cooperation,even in the face of substantial punishment cost.

Oil and gas cooperation between China and Central Asia in an environment of political and resource competition

This paper investigates Central Asia＇s oil and gas resources, special geopolitics and energy competition, and approaches, challenges and prospects in cooperation between China and Central Asia. The objective is to propose measures for oil and gas cooperation between China and Central Asia. Central Asia is rich in oil and gas resources. Its remaining recoverable reserves of crude oil and natural gas account for 1.9% and 10.6 %, respectively, of the world＇s total reserves. Moreover, there is great exploration and development potential. As a strategic channel connecting Eurasia, Central Asia has a prominent geopolitical status. Many powerful countries such as the United States, Russia and China, as well as Europe, have an intense energy competition in Central Asia. In the oil and gas cooperation with Central Asia, the China National Petroleum Corporation （CNPC） focuses on establishing a coordination group, promoting overall oil and gas business opportunities and sustainable development, innovating and applying specialty engineering technology and improving project economic benefits. Through its efforts over the last nearly two decades, the China National Petroleum Corporation has completed a 50-million-tonne a year oil and gas production centre in Central Asia and oil and gas pipelines passing through multiple countries, becoming an important channel for securing China＇s energy imports. If appropriate measures are taken in the ＇Thirteenth Five-Year Plan＇ period or later, the China National Petroleum Corporation will develop a 100-million-tonne p.a. oil and gas production centre in Central Asia and a strategic oil and gas import channel exceeding this amount of production. This cooperation between China and Central Asia is however faced with the following challenges： increasing multinational competition uncertainty, potential risks in the political systems of Central Asian countries, frequently occurring violence and also resource policy tightening in Central Asia. To further oil and gas cooperation with Central Asia, it is recommended that China should develop an energy acquisition strategy, assign a regional energy ambassador, enhance oil and gas supply by mergers and acquisitions, establish regional multinational subsidiaries and improve its risk prevention system.

Competition vs cooperation:renewable energy investment under cap-and-trade mechanisms

This paper explores the incentives of investment in renewable energy of two utility firms who compete or cooperate under either a cap-and-trade grandfathering mechanism(GM)or benchmarking mechanism(BM).We find that utility firms will invest in renewable energy more under BM than under GM,in both competitive and cooperative markets,and they will invest more in a competitive market than in a cooperative market,under either GM or BM.Furthermore,utility firms will produce more electricity and generate more total carbon emissions under BM than under GM.The profits of two firms,however,are higher in cooperative market than in competitive market.The government will benefit from implementing a BM to encourage utility firms to invest in renewable energy in a competing market.

REGIONAL TURMOIL AND MAJOR COUNTRY COMPETITION AND COOPERATION -MAIN FEATURES OF 2017 INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SITUATION

The development of international military situation in 2o17 has been consistent with that of the past few years. While the overall situa- tion is stable, there has been frequent re- gional turmoil with traditional and non- traditional security risks intertwined, and rising uncertainties in international security The evolvement is closely as- sociated with the profound changes in international system and greatly affects the global landscape. In such a turbu- lent period, strategic stability is still tak- ing hold in major country relations as the strategic balance is maintained and effective instead of deviating from the right path.

Entropy description of a cooperation-competition system

Understanding the cooperation-competition dynamics is a long-standing challenge in studying complex systems.Inspired by the idea of Shannon entropy, we define competition information entropy and propose an entropy evolution model. The analytic results of the model of the relation between competition gain distribution parameters and entropy, as well as the relation between entropy and time are compared with empirical results obtained in 14 real world systems. They are found to be in good agreement with each other.

MANUFACTURING SYSTEM SCHEDULING BASED ON MULTI-AGENT COOPERATION GAME

Aiming at the flexible manufacturing system with multi-machining and multi-assembly equipment, a new scheduling algorithm is proposed to decompose the assembly structure of the products, thus obtaining simple scheduling problems and forming the cOrrespOnding agents. Then, the importance and the restriction of each agent are cOnsidered, to obtain an order of simple scheduling problems based on the cooperation game theory. With this order, the scheduling of sub-questions is implemented in term of rules, and the almost optimal scheduling results for meeting the restriction can be obtained. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling algorithm.

Cooperative Anti-Jamming and Interference Mitigation for UAV Networks: A Local Altruistic Game Approach

To improve the anti-jamming and interference mitigation ability of the UAV-aided communication systems, this paper investigates the channel selection optimization problem in face of both internal mutual interference and external malicious jamming. A cooperative anti-jamming and interference mitigation method based on local altruistic is proposed to optimize UAVs’ channel selection. Specifically, a Stackelberg game is modeled to formulate the confrontation relationship between UAVs and the jammer. A local altruistic game is modeled with each UAV considering the utilities of both itself and other UAVs. A distributed cooperative anti-jamming and interference mitigation algorithm is proposed to obtain the Stackelberg equilibrium. Finally, the convergence of the proposed algorithm and the impact of the transmission power on the system loss value are analyzed, and the anti-jamming performance of the proposed algorithm can be improved by around 64% compared with the existing algorithms.

Competition Game Analysis Between Public Enterprises

Municipal public utilities reform is an important part of the economic system structural reform of cities. In this paper a kind of market competition mechanism for commercial municipal public enterprises is proposed; a price competition model of municipal public enterprises with similar products is founded; its static and dynamic game analysis is offered and a comparison between them is made. The results show that,for the business type of municipal public enterprise market competition mechanism can be introduced to mobilize the enterprise activity to raise the end of efficiency; the government may control the market price through the economic measures of regulating the amount of subsidy;that enterprises enter the market and select the price simultaneously is more advantageous than entering the market one after another in general, information among the municipal enterprises is symmetrical (the equilibrium is lower); "following enterprises" gets "second mover advantage";to raise the difference of the same product will increase the profit of enterprise.

Cooperative and Competitive Multi-Agent Systems:From Optimization to Games

Multi-agent systems can solve scientific issues related to complex systems that are difficult or impossible for a single agent to solve through mutual collaboration and cooperation optimization.In a multi-agent system,agents with a certain degree of autonomy generate complex interactions due to the correlation and coordination,which is manifested as cooperative/competitive behavior.This survey focuses on multi-agent cooperative optimization and cooperative/non-cooperative games.Starting from cooperative optimization,the studies on distributed optimization and federated optimization are summarized.The survey mainly focuses on distributed online optimization and its application in privacy protection,and overviews federated optimization from the perspective of privacy protection me-chanisms.Then,cooperative games and non-cooperative games are introduced to expand the cooperative optimization problems from two aspects of minimizing global costs and minimizing individual costs,respectively.Multi-agent cooperative and non-cooperative behaviors are modeled by games from both static and dynamic aspects,according to whether each player can make decisions based on the information of other players.Finally,future directions for cooperative optimization,cooperative/non-cooperative games,and their applications are discussed.

THE OPTIMAL CONTROL FOR PROMOTING THE COOPERATION IN EVOLUTION GAME GENERATED BY PRISONER'S DILEMMA

Natural selection opposes the evolution of cooperation unless specific mechanisms are at work in Prisoner＇s Dilemma. By taking advantage of the modern control theory, the controller design is discussed and the optimal control is designed for promoting cooperation based on the recent advances in mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation. Two con- trol strategies are proposed： compensation control strategy for the cooperator when playing against a defector and reward control strategy for cooperator when playing against a coop- erator. The feasibility and effectiveness of these control strategies for promoting cooperation in different stages are analyzed. The reward for cooperation can＇t prevent defection from being evolutionary stable strategy （ESS）. On the other hand, compensation for the coopera- tor can＇t prevent defection from emerging and sustaining. By considering the effect and the cost, an optimal control scheme with constraint on the admissible control set is put forward. By analyzing the special nonlinear system of replicator dynamics, the exact analytic solution of the optimal control scheme is obtained based on the maximum principle. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by examples.

The evolution of cooperation in public good game with deposit

The emergence of cooperation still remains a fundamental conundrum in the social and behavior sciences.We introduce a new mechanism,deposit mechanism,into theoretical model to explore how this mechanism promotes cooperation in a well-mixed population.Firstly,we extend the common binary-strategy combination of cooperation and defection in public good game by adding a third strategy,namely,deposit cooperation.The players with deposit cooperation strategy pay a deposit in advance to obtain the benefits of public good at a lower contributions compared with the players with cooperation strategy,when the provision of public good is successful.Then,we explore the evolution of cooperation in the public good game with deposit by means of the replicator dynamics.Theoretical computations and stimulations show that the deposit mechanism can promote cooperation in a well-mixed population,and the numbers of equilibrium point are determined by variables of public good game.On the one hand,when the coexistence of cooperators and defectors is the stable equilibrium point in the evolutionary system,increasing the threshold of public good and adopting the weak altruism way for share benefits can enhance the level of cooperation in the population.On the other hand,if the coexistence of deposit cooperators and defectors is the stable equilibrium point,it is effective to promote the deposit cooperation by lowering the values of discount and deposit,and raising the threshold of public good.

Pricing decision of green supply chain under the game competition of duopolistic retailers

In order to evaluate the impact of green production introduced by the manufacturer and study the competitive strategy between two retailers,four strategic models among diverse retailers,i.e.,Cournot,Stackelberg and two cases of collusion,are constructed.The optimal decision is obtained by the game theory and numerical analysis.The results indicate that the manufacturer's marginal profitability is no less than that of the two retailers.However,due to the manufacturer's green cost,the downstream profitability of the supply chain may exceed the upstream manufacturer's profitability.The retailers'Cournot behavior causes the manufacturer to acquire the highest profitability and set the highest green level.However,there is an opposite result in collusion.Two retailers will choose Cournot pricing when the consumer's green sensitivity is higher than a threshold.When consumers are more sensitive to the price difference of products,retailers prefer collusion,and then choose the Stackelberg behavior.Manufacturers'profitability will increase as competition among retailers intensifies.Proper competition allows two duopolistic retailers to acquire a higher profitability.

Case Study on the Forestry Cooperation Model from Game Structure Perspective

Take Chinese yew cooperative organization for example,different game structures of forestry cooperation model were analyzed,the elative merit and applicable occasion was discussed combined with empirical investigation,and some suggestions were given also.The results showed that depending entirely on normal forest farmers cooperate spontaneously is difficult.Policies should be designed from the perspective of promoted village cadres and influential family salons to cooperation.When market factors become the main obstacle,it is necessary to introduce companies,relax constraints of forest management and build the right market atmosphere.According to unequal status of company and forest farmers,develop the cooperation model of " company + cooperation organization + farmers".In certain circumstances,especially there are several companies vicious competition,the intervention of association can play a coordinating role.

Benefit community promotes evolution of cooperation in prisoners’ dilemma game

Exploring the emergence and maintenance of cooperation in social dilemma is valuable and it arises considerable concerns of many researchers. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to promote cooperation, called benefit community,in which cooperators linking together form a common benefit community and all their payoffs obtained from game are divided coequally. The robustness of conclusions is tested for the PDG(prisoners' dilemma game) on square lattice and WS small world network. We find that cooperation can be promoted by this typical mechanism, especially, it can diffuse and prevail more easily and rapidly on the WS small world network than it on the square lattice, even if a big temptation to defect b. Our research provides a feasible direction to resolve the social dilemma.

A 2-stage strategy updating rule promotes cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game

In this study,we propose a spatial prisoner＇s dilemma game model with a 2-stage strategy updating rule,and focus on the cooperation behavior of the system.In the first stage,i.e.,the pre-learning stage,a focal player decides whether to update his strategy according to the pre-learning factor β and the payoff difference between himself and the average of his neighbors.If the player makes up his mind to update,he enters into the second stage,i.e.,the learning stage,and adopts a strategy of a randomly selected neighbor according to the standard Fermi updating rule.The simulation results show that the cooperation level has a non-trivial dependence on the pre-learning factor.Generally,the cooperation frequency decreases as the pre-learning factor increases;but a high cooperation level can be obtained in the intermediate region of- 3〈 β 〈-1.We then give some explanations via studying the co-action of pre-learning and learning.Our results may sharpen the understanding of the influence of the strategy updating rule on evolutionary games.

Integrating the environmental factor into the strategy updating rule to promote cooperation in evolutionary games

Many previous studies have shown that the environment plays an important role for social individuals. In this paper, we integrate the environmental factor, which is defined as the average payoff of all a player＇s neighbours, with the standard Fermi updating rule by introducing a tunable parameter, w. It is found that the level of cooperation increases remarkably, and that the cooperators can better resist the invasion of defection with an increase in w. This interesting phenomenon is then explained from a microscopic view. In addition, the universality of this mechanism is also proved with the help of the small-world network and the random regular graph. This work may be helpful in understanding cooperation behaviour in species from unicellular organisms up to human beings.

Adaptive co-evolution of strategies and network leading to optimal cooperation level in spatial prisoner's dilemma game

We study evolutionary prisoner＇s dilemma game on adaptive networks where a population of players co-evolves with their interaction networks. During the co-evolution process, interacted players with opposite strategies either rewire the link between them with probability p or update their strategies with probability 1 - p depending on their payoffs. Numerical simulation shows that the final network is either split into some disconnected communities whose players share the same strategy within each community or forms a single connected network in which all nodes are in the same strategy. Interestingly, the density of cooperators in the final state can be maximised in an intermediate range of p via the competition between time scale of the network dynamics and that of the node dynamics. Finally, the mean-field analysis helps to understand the results of numerical simulation. Our results may provide some insight into understanding the emergence of cooperation in the real situation where the individuals＇ behaviour and their relationship adaptively co-evolve.

Modeling and game strategy analysis of suppressing IADS for multiple fighters' cooperation

This paper addresses the problem of suppression of the integrated air defense system(IADS) by multiple fighters’ cooperation. Considering the dynamic changing of the number of the nodes in the operational process, a profit model for the influence of the mission’s cost for the whole system is developed for both offense and defensive sides. The scenario analysis is given for the process of suppressing the IADS by multiple fighters. Based on this scenario analysis, the modeling method and the specific expression for the payoff function are proposed in four cases for each node. Moreover, a distributed virtual learning algorithm is designed for the n-person and n-strategy game, and the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium(MSNE) of this game can be solved from the n × m × 3-dimensional profit space. Finally, the simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the game algorithm.

Cooperation influenced by the correlation degree of two-layered complex networks in evolutionary prisoner’s dilemma games

An evolutionary prisoner＇s dilemma game is investigated on two-layered complex networks respectively representing interaction and learning networks in one and two dimensions. A parameter q is introduced to denote the correlation degree between the two-layered networks. Using Monte Carlo simulations we studied the effects of the correlation degree on cooperative behaviour and found that the cooperator density nontrivially changes with q for different payoff parameter values depending on the detailed strategy updating and network dimension. An explanation for the obtained results is provided.