UBC Math Department Colloquium: Segismundo Izquierdo

A game represents an interaction in which a group of players make individual choices and receive individual payoffs that depend on the aggregate set of choices. We consider indefinitely repeated games with endogenous separation (meaning that players can dissolve their current group of co-players, and find a new group), in an evolutionary setting. In this setting, there is a large population of agents that are matched in groups (partnerships) to play a game. Interactions are repeated with the same partners while a partnership lasts, but partnerships can be broken either by exogenous factors (with some probability after each interaction) or because some player decides to break the partnership. A strategy for a player specifies, at any repetition of the game, i) which action to choose and ii) whether to break or not the current partnership, both conditional on the past set of choices within the partnership. We study evolutionary equilibria in this setting, focusing on neutrally stable states and strategies.