Players acting as leaders in turn improve cooperation

Pu-Yan Nie; Chan Wang; Ting Cui

doi:10.1098/rsos.190251

Players acting as leaders in turn improve cooperation

R Soc Open Sci. 2019 Jul 10;6(7):190251. doi: 10.1098/rsos.190251. eCollection 2019 Jul.

Authors

Pu-Yan Nie¹, Chan Wang¹, Ting Cui²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Guangdong Economy and Social Development, School of Finance, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics (GDUFE), 510320 Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
² School of Accounting, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics (GDUFE), 510320 Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Cooperation behaviour is an important topic in society as well as in the biological field, and many factors yield cooperation. Many social phenomena constitute Stackelberg games, but there is little literature on the relationship between Stackelberg games and cooperation. This article shows that in the repeated dynamic Stackelberg games, players acting as leaders in turn yields cooperation. Moreover, social welfare is improved correspondingly when players act as leaders in turn. Therefore, for dynamic Stackelberg games, this paper proposes that the institution of players acting as leaders in turn promotes cooperation.

Keywords: Stackelberg games; cooperation; dynamic game; leaders in turn.