Collaborate, compete and share

TL;DR

This paper models an interacting agent population where groups compete for resources, highlighting the strategic trade-offs agents face between contributing to group success and sharing profits, revealing complex static and evolutionary behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model of strategic interactions in collaborative-competitive populations, analyzing static and evolutionary properties with rich phenomena.

Findings

Coexistence of agents focusing on group success and profit sharing.

Emergence of complex static and evolutionary behaviors.

Robust phenomenology of strategic investment in collaboration and competition.

Abstract

We introduce and study a model of an interacting population of agents who collaborate in groups which compete for limited resources. Groups are formed by random matching agents and their worth is determined by the sum of the efforts deployed by agents in group formation. Agents, on their side, have to share their effort between contributing to their group's chances to outcompete other groups and resource sharing among partners, when the group is successful. A simple implementation of this strategic interaction gives rise to static and evolutionary properties with a very rich phenomenology. A robust emerging feature is the coexistence in the population of agents who invest mainly in the success of their group and agents who concentrate in getting the largest share of their group's profits.