The authors study a population of agents, each of whom can be an altruist or an egoist. Altruism is a strictly dominated strategy. Agents choose their actions by imitating others who earn high payoffs. Interactions between agents are local, so that each agent affects, and is affected by, only...

This paper studies a population of agents, each of whom can be either an Altruist or an Egoist. Altruists confer benefits on others at a cost to themselves. Altruism is thus a strictly dominated strategy and cannot survive if agents are rational best-responders. We assume that agents choose...