Conflict, settlement, and the shadow of the future

McBride, Michael; Skaperdas, Stergios

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2014.04.023

Cited by 51 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Recently, several laboratory experiments have examined different conflict resolution mechanisms including sidepayments Sheremeta, 2013, 2014) and random devices . Other studies investigate the importance of retaliation (Lacomba et al, 2014), emotions (Bolle et al, 2014), and the length of the conflict (McBride and Skaperdas, 2014), on the likelihood of conflict avoidance.…”

Section: Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Experimental Research on Contests, All-Pay Auctions and Tournaments

2012

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Many economic, political and social environments can be described as contests in which agents exert costly efforts while competing over the distribution of a scarce resource. These environments have been studied using Tullock contests, all-pay auctions and rank-order tournaments. This survey provides a comprehensive review of experimental research on these three canonical contests. First, we review studies investigating the basic structure of contests, including the number of players and prizes, spillovers and externalities, heterogeneity, risk and incomplete information. Second, we discuss dynamic contests and multi-battle contests. Then we review studies examining sabotage, feedback, bias, collusion, alliances, group contests and gender, as well as field experiments. Finally, we discuss applications of contests and suggest directions for future research. IntroductionMany economic, political and social environments can be described as contests in which competing agents have the opportunity to expend scarce resources -such as effort, money, time, or troops -in order to affect the probabilities of winning prizes. Examples range from the competition for mates, college admission, patents, or promotions within firms, to the process of litigation or lobbying politicians, to elections, sports competitions, and violent global conflicts (Tullock, 1967;Krueger, 1974). As is obvious from this list, these environments have attracted considerable attention in applications in a wide range of fields, both in-and out-side of economics. They have also been studied extensively by economic theorists in what has become known as the field of contest theory (Konrad, 2009). Although this field continues to attract many young theorists, it has its roots in three models developed in the mid-seventies to early eighties: the Tullock (1980) model of rent-seeking, the Lazear and Rosen (1981) rank-order tournament model, and the all-pay auction (Hirshleifer and Riley, 1978;Nalebuff and Stiglitz, 1983;Dasgupta, 1986;Hillman and Riley, 1989). Despite the fact that the three models historically developed somewhat independently, they represent special cases of a general contest model that can be formulated in a unified framework.Despite an extensive and established theoretical literature, much less effort has been devoted to empirically investigate individual behavior in different contests and compare such behavior with theoretical predictions. The main reason is that it is not trivial to measure individual effort in the field since the researcher can only observe the performance of contestants, which is a function of effort, ability and luck (Ericsson and Charness, 1994). The majority of empirical studies use either firm level data (Prendergast, 1999) or sports data (Szymanski, 2003). Because it is typically difficult to measure the actual effort expended by players in the field, almost all of these studies focus solely on investigating whether the pattern of outcomes is consistent with the theoretical predictions.Controlled experimen...

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Section: Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Experimental Research on Contests, All-Pay Auctions and Tournaments

2012

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“…Second, we include situations where the defeated party has the opportunity to increase the victor's appropriation costs by offering resistance or by applying scorched-earth tactics (Hirshleifer, 1991b). To some extent, the possibility that appropriation as such produces efficiency losses has been acknowledged in the literature by introducing an exogenous cost of predation (Neary, 1997b;Grossman and Kim, 1995;McBride and Skaperdas, 2009). In our setup, this cost is endogenous.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

Lacomba

Lagos

Reuben

et al. 2014

Games and Economic Behavior

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ABSTRACT:We introduce three variations of the Hirshleifer-Skaperdas conflict game to study experimentally the effects of post-conflict behavior and repeated interaction on the allocation of effort between production and appropriation. Without repeated interaction, destruction of resources by defeated players can lead to lower appropriative efforts and higher overall efficiency. With repeated interaction, appropriative efforts are considerably reduced because some groups manage to avoid fighting altogether, often after substantial initial conflict. To attain peace, players must first engage in costly signaling by making themselves vulnerable and by forgoing the possibility to appropriate the resources of defeated opponents.

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“…For example, Durham et al (1998) find substantial support for the "paradox of power" by showing that the weaker players tend to achieve payoffs similar to the stronger players; see also Powell and Wilson (2008). Tingley (2011) and McBride and Skaperdas (2014) find that conflicts escalate in "the shadow of the future" by showing that subjects are more likely to engage in destructive conflict as the future becomes more important, while find in a laboratory setting that conflicts are more likely to occur when players are relatively asymmetric.…”

Section: Guns Versus Butter Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends

Kimbrough

Laughren

Sheremeta

2020

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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We review the main economic models of war and conflict. These models vary in details, but their implications are qualitatively consistent, highlighting key commonalities across a variety of conflict settings. Recent empirical literature, employing both laboratory and field data, in many cases confirms the basic implications of conflict theory. However, this literature also presents important challenges to the way economists traditionally model conflict. We finish our review by suggesting ways to address these challenges.JEL classifications: D72, D74, F51, F52, F54, H56, N4, Q34

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Conflict, settlement, and the shadow of the future

Cited by 51 publications

References 43 publications

A Survey of Experimental Research on Contests, All-Pay Auctions and Tournaments

A Survey of Experimental Research on Contests, All-Pay Auctions and Tournaments

On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

War and conflict in economics: Theories, applications, and recent trends

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