Partner Choice and Cooperation in Networks

Cooperation is beneficial but may be hard to achieve in situations where the selfish interests of individuals conflict with their common goal, such as in sharing of goods, help, knowledge or information, in trade and pollution negotiations, and in exploitation of common resources. The standard models of such "social dilemmas" assume that the individuals are obliged to participate in the dilemma. These models fail to capture an important element of human interaction: that people are in general fr