SHES 2402 ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS

TUTORIAL 5

1. In an election year, two major political parties must compete for votes.
To influence the voting masses, they “cook up” an issue, which allows three
possible stances: favour X, favour Y, or dodge the issue. The payoff matrix
(rows for Party A, columns for Party B) is given as follows.

FAVOUR X FAVOUR Y DODGE

FAVOUR X 0.45 0.50 0.40
FAVOUR Y 0.60 0.55 0.50
DODGE 0.45 0.55 0.40

The entries give the expected payoff to Party A in terms of voter’s support
for some combination of joint action. What are the equilibrium strategies for
both parties?

2. Write down the payoff matrix for the hawk, dove, bourgeois game discussed
in the lecture notes. Use the following information to help you: bourgeois
behave like hawks in their own turf but act like doves elsewhere; bourgeois-
bourgeois conflicts are settled quickly with the winner receiving +10 and
the intruder getting nothing; a bourgeois has an equal chance of being in
its own turf or outside of it. Subsequently, show that the maximin strategy
(maximising the minimum gain) leads to bourgeois-bourgeois interaction.
Interestingly, this provides theoretical support for the evolution of territorial
behaviour in many animal species.

KTF 2009/2010(2)