UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA

摘要: During my PhD I studied cooperation and competition, two opposing manifestations that an entity of any nature can present when it interacts with another one. I used the term “entity” because these two behavioral tendencies can manifest themselves in various subjects and at different levels. Our cells cooperate to allow the functioning of body, cancer cells instead, growing selfishly, tend to damage it. Cooperation can take place between individuals of a group such as, for example, colleagues who work for the same company; in turn companies are entities that compete in their marketing sector. In the case of empires, civilizations and nations throughout history, they struggled and fought each other, or have joined forces to fight a common enemy. Each of us, in everyday life, chooses whether to cooperate with other members the society we all are a part of, or to pursue their own selfish interests. Building our philosophy on these choices we usually decide, for example whether to recycle, keep public places clean or help a child or an old man to cross the street, or not. The topic is therefore of crucial importance: understanding the basic concepts of cooperation and competition is fundamental to improve social behavior of humans and animals, to explain historical events and even to better understand the functioning of our body. The first chapter is devoted to the discussion of mathematical models for the study of cooperation and competition. From the mathematical point of view the topic of cooperation as opposed to competition was the main object of Game Theory. Indeed this branch of mathematics studies and analyzes individual choices in situations …