Can anyone refer me to a study of what might be called cooperative networks. I'm think of a network of agents, each of which is more or less autonomous but each of which also often needs the cooperation of other agents to survive and prosper. Imagine, for example, a workplace environment. People often do favors for each other. There are of course many reasons for that. But among those are the idea that one wants to remain on good terms with others (among other reasons) just in case one may want to call on the other person for a reciprocal favor. I don't want to make the model too economics-based with the idea of bartering favors. It seems to me that most such networks are much more informal. Yet they still generate cooperation--especially when cooperation is not too costly for the person granting the favor and when the other person is potentially important to the favor-giver's future.
There must be work on such models. Does anyone know of a good reference? Thanks. -- Russ
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