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The Tragedy of the Commons

In this step we discuss the most classical example of a Multi-Person Prisoner’s Dilemma related to common resources, called the Tragedy of the Commons
Tragedy mask
© Karl Turner via theNounProject
In the video below you will see the most classical example of a Multi-Person Prisoner’s Dilemma that relates specifically to common resources. It is called the Tragedy of the Commons.

In the video, you will see not only the mechanism behind the Tragedy of the Commons, but also some solutions.

This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube.

Tragedy of the Commons

In the next weeks we will pay a closer look both to the problem of modelling the mechanism of resource overuse (Week 3), and to how we can solve this problem and model the solutions (Week 4).

In the video several examples of the tragedy of the commons were introduced. Think about other examples of such situations. Please share them with other learners.

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Understanding Human Behaviour: Introduction to Game Theory and Shared Resources

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