This work uses Game Theory to study the effectiveness of punishments as an incentive for rational nodes to follow an epidemic dissemination protocol. We consider asymmetric interactions and an arbitrary graph. The dissemination process is modeled as an infinite repetition of a stage game, where nodes disseminate a sequence of messages and monitor the actions of their neighbors. At the end of ea...

Through different policies and measures reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation and enhancing conservation (REDD+) has grown into a way to induce behavior change of forest managers and landowners in tropical countries. We argue that debates around REDD+ in Brazil have typically highlighted rewards and punishments, obscuring other core interventions and strategies that are also cri...

The vigor with which humans and animals engage in a task is often a determinant of the likelihood of the task's success. An influential theoretical model suggests that the speed and rate at which responses are made should depend on the availability of rewards and punishments. While vigor facilitates the gathering of rewards in a bountiful environment, there is an incentive to slow down when pun...

People often make decisions under aversive conditions such as acute stress. Yet, less is known about the process in which acute stress can influence decision-making. A growing body of research has established that reward-related information associated with the outcomes of decisions exerts a powerful influence over the choices people make and that an extensive network of brain regions, prominent...

This paper uses documentary records of the bromine cartel from 1885 to 1914 to evaluate the contributions of noncooperative, repeated game models of collusion to our understanding of the determinants of cartel success and the causes of price wars. It finds that many of the variables that determine an industry’s ability to collude in these models—the discount rate, the information structure, the...

We study the quality of politicians when groups attempt to exert influence on policies by using both bribes (plata, Spanish for silver and money) and the threat of punishments (plomo, Spanish for lead). Contrary to the case in which groups use only bribes (as is traditional in the literature) and more capture does not damage the equilibrium quality of politicians, in the general case where also...

For many years, notes Alex Piquero, youth of color have been overrepresented at every stage of the U.S. juvenile justice system. As with racial disparities in a wide variety of social indicators, the causes of these disparities are not immediately apparent. Some analysts attribute the disparities to "differential involvement"--that is, to differences in offending by minorities and whites. Other...