Names of collective action problems
A Rosetta Stone for collective action games. Each structure's standard name, its aliases in economics, biology, the social sciences and popular writing, the name this course uses, and a one-line gist.
Names of collective action problems
The same structure goes by different names in different fields, and the same name is sometimes used for different structures. This table lines them up. The structure is what decides: write out the payoffs and see which game it is (Greed and fear).
| Standard name | Economics | Biology | Sociology, political science, psychology | Popular | Course name | Gist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prisoner's Dilemma | Free-rider problem; n-person prisoner's dilemma | Prisoner's dilemma; cheaters | Collective action as an n-person PD (R. Hardin 1982, p. 25, as quoted by Sandler 1992, p. 44) | Free riding; "why should I bother" | Battle line | Defecting pays whatever others do; everyone defects |
| Stag hunt | Coordination failure; assurance | Stag hunt | Assurance game (Taylor 1987; Heckathorn 1996) | "I'll go if you go" | Stag hunt | Two equilibria; the better one needs trust |
| Chicken (game) | Chicken; war of attrition (the dynamic version) | Hawk–Dove (Osborne and Rubinstein 1994, p. 30); snowdrift game (Doebeli and Hauert 2005) | Chicken; brinkmanship | Game of chicken; standoff | Chicken | Each wants the other to yield; both refusing is the worst outcome |
| Volunteer's dilemma | Best-shot public good (Sandler calls it a "coordination" game, 1992, p. 41; the payoff order is the volunteer's) | — | Volunteer's dilemma (Diekmann 1985 [?]; same model in Dixit, Skeath and Reiley 2015, pp. 455–457); bystander effect (Darley and Latané 1968 [?]) | "Someone should do something" | Chicken (many players) | One person acting is enough; the question is who |
| Coordination game (pure) | Coordination game; standards | — | Convention (Lewis 1969 [?]); focal point (Schelling 1960 [?]) | Which side of the road | Baseline, off the map | Everyone wants to match; only which match is open |
| Battle of the sexes | "Bach or Stravinsky", BoS (Osborne and Rubinstein 1994, p. 15) | — | — | Standards war | Close to chicken | Both want to match; each prefers their own |
| Harmony | Privileged group, roughly (Olson 1965, pp. 49–50) | — | "Privileged game" (Heckathorn 1996, p. 259) | — | No problem | Cooperating pays anyway |
| Deadlock | — | — | "Altruist's dilemma" (Heckathorn 1996, pp. 258–259) | — | Not a dilemma | Both prefer mutual defection; cooperating would be a mistake |
| Tragedy of the commons | Common-pool resource problem; open access | Tragedy of the commons (G. Hardin 1968) | Commons dilemma (Kollock 1998) | Overfishing, overgrazing | Battle line, taking side | n-person prisoner's dilemma where cooperating means restraint |
| Public goods game | Public goods problem; linear public goods game (experiments) | Microbial public goods | Public goods dilemma (Kollock 1998) | — | Battle line, building side | n-person prisoner's dilemma where cooperating means contributing |
| Moloch | Race to the bottom | — | Arms race; security dilemma | Moloch; Multipolar trap | Battle line, taking side | Competition pushes each to sacrifice a shared value |
Notes on the table
- Chicken. Osborne and Rubinstein give both names:
Hawk–Dove is known also as "Chicken".
— Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein, A Course in Game Theory (1994), p. 30
- Tragedy of the commons. Ostrom (Governing the Commons, 1990, pp. 217–218, n. 2) notes that Garrett Hardin's model translates easily into the prisoner's dilemma structure. Open access is the prisoner's dilemma case; limited-access commons often aren't one (p. 48). See Taking and building.
- "Free-rider problem" is often used for every collective action problem. Ostrom (pp. 2–7) shows that the tragedy of the commons, the prisoner's dilemma and Olson's logic of collective action all rest on free riding. Strictly, free riding in a Volunteer's dilemma or a Stag hunt has different consequences and different fixes.
- "Social dilemma" is an umbrella term for the whole family, not a synonym for the prisoner's dilemma: Kollock (1998) covers the prisoner's dilemma, assurance and chicken under it.
- Privileged group is only roughly harmony: Olson (p. 50, n. 70) notes that a privileged group could fail if each refuses "on the mistaken assumption that the others would provide it", though he doubts it would last. That is the volunteer's dilemma.
- Arms races and the security dilemma fit the prisoner's dilemma or the stag hunt depending on the payoffs. See Prisoner's dilemma vs stag hunt.
- Moloch is from Scott Alexander, "Meditations on Moloch" (Slate Star Codex, 30 July 2014). It is good branding for the battle line. Applied to every collective action problem, it misses the patterns whose fix is assurance or allocation rather than changing everyone's payoffs (Patterns of collective action).
- Numbering. In Rapoport and Guyer's taxonomy of 78 ordinal 2×2 games, the prisoner's dilemma is game 12, assurance 61, chicken 66, the privileged game 6 and the altruist's dilemma 9 (as used by Heckathorn 1996, p. 258).
