Hugues Martin Dit Neuville ’21, Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Hugues Martin Dit Neuville ’21

Major

Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Project Title

Environmental Dilemmas of Cooperation in Heterogeneous Populations

Presentation Link

View Hugues's Presentation

Certificate(s): Environmental Studies

I helped peer-review a paper by my postdoctoral mentors about the effect that expectation biases have on cooperation in nonlinear public goods games. With the help of my fellow intern, Cathy Teng, I built a simulation model that verified the results of the paper’s theoretical model. I was then given the opportunity to expand the paper by delving into a topic that interests me. I explored the effect that network topologies have on mitigating or enhancing the effects that expectation biases have on cooperation. I was able to show that community networks outperformed other network structures in populations suffering from under-trust and pluralistic ignorance. When no bias is present in the population, interconnected communities perform better. However, when pluralistic ignorance or under-trust is introduced, then isolated communities with little interaction are better. This could indicate that in cases where cooperators are distrustful or skeptical about the behaviors of others — which is often the case in climate treaties — it may be more effective to construct multiple regional agreements instead of a singular treaty with a large membership, as has been the case for almost all major climate agreements.