Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 416789, 23 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/416789
Research Article

Discrete Dynamics in Evolutionary Games

Business Research Unit (UNIDE), Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) and Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração de Lisboa (ISCAL/IPL), 1069-035 Lisbon, Portugal

Received 2 January 2012; Accepted 12 February 2012

Academic Editor: Zuo Nong Zhu

Copyright © 2012 Orlando Gomes. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper furnishes a guide for the study of 2-dimensional evolutionary games in discrete time. Evolutionarily stable strategies are identified and nonlinear outcomes are explored. Besides the baseline payoffs of the established strategic interaction, the following elements are also vital to determine the dynamic outcome of a game: the initial fitness of each agent and the rule of motion that describes how individuals switch between strategies. In addition to the dynamic rule commonly used in evolutionary games, the replicator dynamics, we propose another rule, which acknowledges the role of expectations and sophisticates the replicator mechanism.