coordination, differentiation and fairness in a population of cooperating agents协调、分化和公平的合作代理.pdfVIP

Games 2012, 3, 30-40; doi:10.3390/g3010030 OPEN ACCESS games ISSN 2073-4336 /journal/games Article Coordination, Differentiation and Fairness in a Population of Cooperating Agents Anne-Ly Do 1,*, Lars Rudolf 2 and Thilo Gross 2 1 ¨ Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nothnitzer Str. 38, Dresden 01187, Germany 2 Department of Engineering Mathematics, University of Bristol, Merchant Venturers Building, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK; E-Mails: rudolflars@ (L.R.); thilo2gross@ (T.G.) Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: ly@pks.mpg.de; Tel.: +49-351-871-1119; Fax: +49-351-871-1299. Received: 2 February 2012; in revised form: 27 February 2012 / Accepted: 29 February 2012 / Published: 5 March 2012 Abstract: In a recent paper, we analyzed the self-assembly of a complex cooperation network. The network was shown to approach a state where every agent invests the same amount of resources. Nevertheless, highly-connected agents arise that extract extraordinarily high payoffs while contributing comparably little to any of their cooperations. Here, we investigate a variant of the model, in which highly-connected agents have access to additional resources. We study analytically and numerically whether these resources are invested in existing collaborations, leading to a fairer load distribution, or in establishing new collaborations, leading to an even less fair distributi