Presentation on YouTube.

In this talk, I give an overview of three recent works joint with Josef Hofbauer on the evolutionary dynamics of costly signaling in three larger classes of games:

1. classical costly-signaling games à la Spence (education as a costly signal in the job market) and Zahavi (display of 'handicaps' in mating, stotting, coloration of autumn leaves), as investigated in Hofbauer and Pawlowitsch (2025 IJGT),

2. games in which players get a positive payoff increment when producing a signal (Hofbauer and Pawlowitsch 2025, Dynamic Games and Applications), and,

3. games in which the costly signal imposes a cost also on the receiver in case they accept to engage with the sender in the social exchange at stake (hiring, buying, mating). Examples of this last scenario are: agency commissions at conclusion of a contract, sickness presenteeism (attending work while sick), and politeness in language.