Abstract
We study catastrophic behaviors in large networked systems in the paradigm of evolutionary games by incorporating a realistic "death" or "bankruptcy" mechanism. We find that a cascading bankruptcy process can arise when defection strategies exist and individuals are vulnerable to deficit. Strikingly, we observe that, after the catastrophic cascading process terminates, cooperators are the sole survivors, regardless of the game types and of the connection patterns among individuals as determined by the topology of the underlying network. It is necessary that individuals cooperate with each other to survive the catastrophic failures. Cooperation thus becomes the optimal strategy and absolutely outperforms defection in the game evolution with respect to the "death" mechanism. Our results can be useful for understanding large-scale catastrophe in real-world systems and in particular, they may yield insights into significant social and economical phenomena such as large-scale failures of financial institutions and corporations during an economic recession. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3621719]
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 033112 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Chaos |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sep 2011 |
Cite this
Cascading failures and the emergence of cooperation in evolutionary-game based models of social and economical networks. / Wang, Wen-Xu; Lai, Ying-Cheng; Armbruster, Dieter.
In: Chaos, Vol. 21, No. 3, 033112, 09.2011.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Cascading failures and the emergence of cooperation in evolutionary-game based models of social and economical networks
AU - Wang, Wen-Xu
AU - Lai, Ying-Cheng
AU - Armbruster, Dieter
PY - 2011/9
Y1 - 2011/9
N2 - We study catastrophic behaviors in large networked systems in the paradigm of evolutionary games by incorporating a realistic "death" or "bankruptcy" mechanism. We find that a cascading bankruptcy process can arise when defection strategies exist and individuals are vulnerable to deficit. Strikingly, we observe that, after the catastrophic cascading process terminates, cooperators are the sole survivors, regardless of the game types and of the connection patterns among individuals as determined by the topology of the underlying network. It is necessary that individuals cooperate with each other to survive the catastrophic failures. Cooperation thus becomes the optimal strategy and absolutely outperforms defection in the game evolution with respect to the "death" mechanism. Our results can be useful for understanding large-scale catastrophe in real-world systems and in particular, they may yield insights into significant social and economical phenomena such as large-scale failures of financial institutions and corporations during an economic recession. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3621719]
AB - We study catastrophic behaviors in large networked systems in the paradigm of evolutionary games by incorporating a realistic "death" or "bankruptcy" mechanism. We find that a cascading bankruptcy process can arise when defection strategies exist and individuals are vulnerable to deficit. Strikingly, we observe that, after the catastrophic cascading process terminates, cooperators are the sole survivors, regardless of the game types and of the connection patterns among individuals as determined by the topology of the underlying network. It is necessary that individuals cooperate with each other to survive the catastrophic failures. Cooperation thus becomes the optimal strategy and absolutely outperforms defection in the game evolution with respect to the "death" mechanism. Our results can be useful for understanding large-scale catastrophe in real-world systems and in particular, they may yield insights into significant social and economical phenomena such as large-scale failures of financial institutions and corporations during an economic recession. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3621719]
U2 - 10.1063/1.3621719
DO - 10.1063/1.3621719
M3 - Article
VL - 21
JO - Chaos
JF - Chaos
SN - 1054-1500
IS - 3
M1 - 033112
ER -