The Formation and Long-run Stability of Cooperative Groups in a Social Dilemma Situation

We consider the formation and long-run stability of cooperative groups in a social dilemma situation where the pursuit of individual interests conicts with the maximization of social welfare. The adaptive play model of Young (1993) is applied to a group formation game where voluntary participants negotiate to create an institution that enforces cooperation. For the class of group formation games with two types, the stochastically stable equilibrium can be characterized in terms of the Nash products of the associated hawk-dove games, which summarize the strategic interaction among the individuals in the game.