This module takes up collective action problems. For many activities, individual members of a group will benefit if all or enough people do their parts to contribute to a common goal: they are collective actions. Some of the most significant issues of our time require collective actions: think from pollution, to climate change to the corona virus pandemic. In the first video, learn more about collective actions and the problems they may give rise to.
Game Theory: The Prisoner's Dilemma
In the next part of the lecture, I will introduce a tool to understand collective action problems: game theory. We will specifically learn about the so-called Prisoner's Dilemma, that shows - in simplified form - the general structure of collective action problems. On the way, you will learn about some important concepts, like that of a dominant strategy and a Nash equilibrium.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Now we are returning to collective action problems. Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" shows that those problems have the structure of a multi-person Prisoner's dilemma situation. They are problems where individual rationality conflicts with the collective good. We will begin to look at some examples of big problems that have that structure,
How to solve collective action problems
The last part of the lecture looks at how to solve collective action problems and problems that have the shape of a tragedy of the commons. We look at both the descriptive question (how are such problems actually solved) and the normative question (how can they be solved in a rational fashion).
Reflection & Discussion:
- What are the underlying assumptions about rationality and human motivation that lead to the suboptimal outcome in Prisoner's Dilemmas or the tragedy of the commons? Do you think they are plausible? Why/why not?
- Try to come up with an example of a "collective action problem" that has not yet been discussed in the lecture. Do you think there is an acceptable solution to such problems?