We compare a partners condition where the same small group of subjects plays a repeated public good game to a strangers condition where subjects play this game in changing group formations. Subjects in the partners condition contribute from the first period on significantly more to the public...

The power to take game is a simple two player game where players are randomly divided into pairs consisting of a take authority and responder. Both players in each pair have earned an own income in an individual real effort decision-making experiment preceding the take game. The game consists of...

The same contestants often meet repeatedly in contests. Behavior in a contest potentially provides information with regard to one's type and can therefore influence the behavior of the opponents in later contests. This paper shows that if effort is observable, this can induce a ratchet effect in...

Perfectly discriminating contests (or all pay auction) are widely used as a model of situations where individuals devote resources to win some prize. In reality such contests are often preceded by investments of the contestants into their ability to fight in the contest. This paper studies a two...

This paper models the trade-off between production and appropriation in the presence of simultaneous inter- and intra-group conflicts. The model exhibits a 'group cohesion effect': if the contest between the groups becomes more decisive, or contractual incompleteness between groups becomes more...

This paper considers incentives for information acquisition ahead of conflicts. We characterize the (unique) equilibrium of the all-pay auction between two players with one-sided asymmetric information. The type of one player is common knowledge. The type of the other player is drawn from a...

This paper extends the axiomatic characterization of contest success functions of Skaperdas (1996) and Clark and Riis (1998) to contests between groups. – Contest ; conflict ; axiom ; group

Lobbyists choose what to lobby for. If they can precommit to certain policy proposals, their choice will have an influence on the behavior of opposing lobbyists. Hence lobbyists have an incentive to moderate their policy proposals in order to reduce the intensity of the lobbying contest. This...

We present a dynamic model of the interaction between interest groups and policymakers, featuring endogenous interest group formation. We show that complicated dynamic patterns in economic policies may arise once interest group formation is taken into account. <BR><BR>