An Inspection Game to Provide Incentive for Cooperation with Corrupted Inspectors

Open and autonomous environments, such as peer to peer networks or many social networks, are efficient only if cooperation among nodes is ensured. In order to ensure cooperative behavior, we have added a new node type to the system, called inspector and used game theoretical tools to analyze the system. Inspectors punish both misbehaving nodes as well as nodes who provide dishonest ratings about other peers. Analyzing the proposed inspection game ensures that corruption of inspectors and misbehavior of nodes is bounded. The game enables the system designer to set the amount of corruption that is allowed according to the budget.