On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

Lacomba, Juan Antonio; Lagos, Francisco; Reuben, Ernesto; Winden, F.A.A.M. van

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2014.03.006

Cited by 33 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 72 publications

(60 reference statements)

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“…When asked the same question, a very common response from full time faculty was to bid $50. A bid equal to the half of the prize is an intuitive response often chosen by many subjects in lottery contest experiments (Chowdhury et al, 2014;Lacomba et al, 2014;Lim et al, 2014). We also find in our experiment that bidding half of the prize is one of the most commonly used strategies by participants.…”

supporting

confidence: 69%

Impulsive Behavior in Competition: Testing Theories of Overbidding in Rent-Seeking Contests

Sheremeta

2016

SSRN Journal

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Researchers have proposed various theories to explain overbidding in rentseeking contents, including mistakes, systematic biases, the utility of winning, and relative payoff maximization. Through an eight-part experiment, we test and find significant support for the existing theories. Also, we discover some new explanations based on cognitive ability and impulsive behavior. Out of all explanations examined, we find that impulsivity is the most important factor explaining overbidding in contests.JEL Classifications: C72, C91, D01, D72

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supporting

confidence: 69%

Impulsive Behavior in Competition: Testing Theories of Overbidding in Rent-Seeking Contests

Sheremeta

2016

SSRN Journal

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“…Both studies examine behavior in (simultaneous and sequential, respectively) attacker-defender games, where the defender needs to win all targets, while the attacker needs to win only one target to secure the prize. Other experiments on war contests are done by Linster et al (2001), who examine the incentive to invest in military deterrence faced by two members of a coalition fighting a common opponent, Lacomba et al (2014), who examine behavior in different post-conflict scenarios, Durham et al (1998), who study the "Paradox of Power", and Holt et al (2014), who study the "Paradox of Misaligned Profiling. "…”

Section: Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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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“…That intergroup conflict elicits self-sacrificial contributions to one's group's fighting capacity has been robustly revealed in experiments using N-person (intergroup) prisoner's dilemma (4,5,(15)(16)(17) or price-contest games (18)(19)(20)(21). What cannot be derived from these setups, however, is whether individuals selfsacrifice to (i) defend their in-group against out-group aggression; (ii) to aggressively exploit and subordinate the out-group; or (iii) because of some combination of both reasons (5,9,10,22,23).…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

In-group defense, out-group aggression, and coordination failures in intergroup conflict

Dreu

Gross

Méder

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

120

144

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Intergroup conflict persists when and because individuals make costly contributions to their group's fighting capacity, but how groups organize contributions into effective collective action remains poorly understood. Here we distinguish between contributions aimed at subordinating out-groups (out-group aggression) from those aimed at defending the in-group against possible out-group aggression (in-group defense). We conducted two experiments in which three-person aggressor groups confronted three-person defender groups in a multiround contest game (n = 276; 92 aggressor-defender contests). Individuals received an endowment from which they could contribute to their group's fighting capacity. Contributions were always wasted, but when the aggressor group's fighting capacity exceeded that of the defender group, the aggressor group acquired the defender group's remaining resources (otherwise, individuals on both sides were left with the remainders of their endowment). In-group defense appeared stronger and better coordinated than out-group aggression, and defender groups survived roughly 70% of the attacks. This low success rate for aggressor groups mirrored that of group-hunting predators such as wolves and chimpanzees (n = 1,382 cases), hostile takeovers in industry (n = 1,637 cases), and interstate conflicts (n = 2,586). Furthermore, whereas peer punishment increased out-group aggression more than in-group defense without affecting success rates (Exp. 1), sequential (vs. simultaneous) decision-making increased coordination of collective action for out-group aggression, doubling the aggressor's success rate (Exp. 2). The relatively high success rate of in-group defense suggests evolutionary and cultural pressures may have favored capacities for cooperation and coordination when the group goal is to defend, rather than to expand, dominate, and exploit.competition | parochial altruism | coordination | collective action | intergroup relations

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On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

Cited by 33 publications

References 72 publications

Impulsive Behavior in Competition: Testing Theories of Overbidding in Rent-Seeking Contests

Impulsive Behavior in Competition: Testing Theories of Overbidding in Rent-Seeking Contests

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

In-group defense, out-group aggression, and coordination failures in intergroup conflict

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