Changing the Rules of the Game

Dr. Marco A. Janssen

Department of Spatial Economics

Research questions

• How do rules emerge, get selected and be remembered in social ecological systems?

• What can we learn from (computational models of) immune systems and language development?

Contents

• Puzzles from empirical studies of common pool resources.

• Immune system

• Language development

• Methodology

• Modeling self-organization of institutions

• Discussion

Common Pool Resources

• Are used by multiple-users

• For which joint use involves subtractability, that is, use by one user will subtract benefits from another user’s enjoyment of the resource

• It is difficult to exclude users

Management of CPRs

• Economic Theory predicts Nash equilibrium and overharvesting

• Solutions to derive cooperative solution: – Government will manage the resource– A market will be created

• Laboratory experiments and field studies show an alternative: self-organization of institutions.

Factors important for self-organization

• Type of communication

• Building up mutual trust relationships

• Rules how to monitor and sanction defined by the local users and implemented by local users

• Memory of successful solutions by taboos, rituals, religions, etc.

Immune System

• Distributed system which is able to detect and eliminate invasions of pathogens.

• Detection: self vs non-self

• Response: generation antibodies

• Memory: storing successful responses

Pathogens

• Bacteria

• Parasites

• Viruses

• Fungi

Detection

Recognition

Response

- Continue generation of new cells.

- Replication of cells which bind lots of pathogens: Antibodies

- Antibodies neutralize pathogens

Impact of Memory

Artificial Immune Systems

• Distributed systems for information processes.

• Origin: – study of immune systems– bio-algorithms:

• genetic algorithms

• neural networks

Language development• Different perspectives on language.

• Universal grammar/language:• Genetic transmission

• Localized hard-wired neurological structures: crickets and songbirds

• Higher animals learn language gradually: training parameters of neural network

Complex adaptive system approach

• Language:– result of local interactions of language users– self-organizing process– agents benefit from being understood (fitness)– clustering of agent with same language/dialect

Methodology

• Games:– game theory for institutions, repeated games

with prisoners dilemma– language games, imitation games– evolution of grammar: fitness related to mutual

understanding

Vowels

(De Boer, 2000)

Emergence of vowels by adaptive imitation games

Methodology (II)

• Networks:– Neural networks: learning by finding the right

connection strengths– Immune networks: maintaining immune

memory, spreading information over other parts of the network.

– Social networks.

Methodology (III)

• Evolutionary Computation– Genetic and evolutionary algorithms:

• fitness

• selection

• mutation

• (cross-over)

Modeling self-organization of institutions

• Coding rules

• Creating rules

• Selecting rules

• Remembering rules

Coding rules

• Grammar of Institutions (Crawford and Ostrom, 1995)

• Rules are build up from 5 components:– Attributes (characteristics of the agents)– Deontic: may/must/must not– Aim: action of the agent– Conditions: when, where and how– Or else: sanctions when not following a rule

Creation of Rules

• Mutations and cross-over

• Immune systems: constant generation of new lymphocytes

• Language: interaction with other groups and with new experiences: – Computer led to new words (e-mail & internet)

and new meanings (windows & mouse)– Social groups: jargon of scientists

Genetic Libraries

Selection of RulesRules: Constitutional Collective Operational

Levels of analysis:

Constitutional Collective Operationalchoice choice choice

Processes: Formulation Policy-making AppropriationGovernance Management ProvisionAdjudication Adjudication MonitoringModification Enforcement

Selection of rules (II)

• Criteria for success

• Social networks

• Mutual trust relationships

• Recognition of trustworthy others (reputation, symbols, indirect reciprocity)

Remembering Rules

• Law, universities, taboos, rituals, religions

• Reinforcement and disturbances

• Resilience

• Redundancy

Coverage of antigen space by antibodies

Fitness versus redundancy

(Hightower et al, 1995)

Fitness related to redundancy

(Hightower et al, 1995)

Training the system

• Allow small disturbances to maintain training of the strength of the network, the diversity and functional redundancy

Discussion

• Empirical evidence for self-organization of institutions.

• Formal models may help to explain observations.

• But how to formally model how rules emerge, get selected and be remembered?

Discussion (II)

• We may learn from similarities and differences between institutions, immune systems, and language development.

• Computational tools exists to simulate immune systems and language development

• Toward computational laboratories for social-ecological systems.