Analyzing the tradeoff between efficiency and cost of norm enforcement in stochastic environments populated with self-interested agents

In multiagent systems, agents might interfere with each other as a side-effect of their activities. One approach to coordinating these agents is to restrict their activities by means of social norms whose violation results in sanctions to violating agents. We formalize a normative system within a stochastic environment and norm enforcement follows a stochastic model in which stricter enforcement entails higher cost. Within this type of system, we provide an approach to analize the tradeoff between norm enforcement efficiency and its cost considering a population of norm-aware selfish agents.