When your gain is also my gain. A class of strategic models with other-regarding agents (Q2197098)

The literature in psychological and behavioural game theory shows that rationality and self-interest do not exclude the presence of interests for others. In order to analyse other-regarding strategic models, the methodological framework considered in the present paper is the theory of strategic vector-valued games. The reason is that egalitarianism wants to improve the worst case, thereby, in a general setting, it seeks to maximize the minimum of the weighted components of the vector-valued utility functions. Rawlsian preferences for a wide class of strategic situations which includes Cournot oligopolies and the problem of the commons, are analyzed. Specific conditions on the weights allow the characterization of equilibria as, for instance, in the extreme situation in which all the agents are strictly pro-social: the only equilibrium is the null equilibrium, i.e. the strategy of a completely pro-social agent is always its lowest value, zero. In the opposite situation, if all the agents are pro-self, then the unique non-null equilibrium of the general model coincides with the Cournot equilibrium. In the case in which all the agents are equanimous, a multiplicity of equilibria exists. In these equilibria, the strategy of each agent can be expressed proportionally to the strategy of one of the agents. Moreover, in a mixed situation in which agents with different attitudes are included, various possibilities of interaction can arise. The types of agents considered, were introduced in [\textit{L. Monroy} et al., Metroeconomica 68, No. 4, 947--965 (2017; Zbl 1420.91051)] where the relationship between the social attitude of the agents and the parameters corresponding to the additive representation of preferences, was established.