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Abstract:
In game-theoretic models studying the evolution of cooperation, a common
assumption is that groups are of constant size. Many natural systems, however,
feature variable group sizes that are in
uenced by the level of cooperation in
the population. Hence, the waiting-for-volunteers dilemma, a variant of the
volunteer's dilemma, proposes that individuals sequentially join a group up
to the point where the critical number of cooperators required for provision
of the collective good is reached. The objective of this master's thesis is to
study the eect of a such group formation scheme on the evolutionary dynamics
of social dilemmas in nite populations. Of focal interest are conditions for
natural selection favoring cooperation and for a cooperator having a higher
xation probability than a defector. A striking result is that larger population
sizes impede cooperation by toughening these very conditions, whereas in the
standard volunteer's dilemma with constant group size, larger population sizes
promote cooperation.