Small time delay approximation in replicator dynamics

Abstract

We present a microscopic model of replicator dynamics with strategy-dependent time delays. In such a model, new players are born from parents who interacted and received payoffs in the past. In the case of small delays, we use Taylor expansion to get ordinary differential equations for frequencies of strategies with time delays as parameters. We apply our technique to get analytic expressions for interior stationary states in two games: Snowdrift and Stag-hunt. We show that interior stationary states depend continuously upon time delays. Our analytic formulas for stationary states approximate well exact numerical results for small time delays.