Cooperation

(4 Credits)

How can we best address global challenges such as promoting peace and environmental sustainability? Hardly a week goes by without a major news story concerning the need for cooperation either between countries, political parties, organizations, or individuals. This course explores the topic of cooperation using insights from economics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, social psychology, and anthropology. The main questions to be addressed are: When is cooperation desirable? When should an individual, an organization, or a country expect others to cooperate? Why do some people fail to cooperate even when it would be to their benefit? Which factors undermine cooperation? How can we engineer cooperation to achieve better outcomes?