Leaders compensate supporters not just for performing their duties but also in order to preempt an overthrow by the same supporters. We show how succession rules affect the power of leaders relative to supporters as well as the resources expended on possible succession struggles. We compare two...

GeoDist makes available the exhaustive set of gravity variables used in Mayer and Zignago (2005). GeoDist provides several geographical variables, in particular bilateral distances measured using citylevel data to assess the geographic distribution of population inside each nation. We have...

Advances in communication technology make it possible for workers in India to supply business services to head offices located anywhere. This has the potential to put high-wage workers in direct competition with much lower paid Indian workers. Service trade, however, like goods trade, is subject...

Our experimental analysis of alliances in conflicts leads to three main findings. First, even in the absence of repeated interaction, direct contact or communication, free-riding among alliance members is far less pronounced than what would be expected from non-cooperative theory. Second, this...

We study conflict between two groups of individuals. Using Schaffer's (1988) concept of evolutionary stability we provide an evolutionary underpinning for in-group altruism combined with spiteful behavior towards members of the rival out-group. We characterize the set of evolutionarily stable...

We study an all-pay contest with multiple identical prizes ("lifeboat seats"). Prizes are partitioned into subsets of prizes ("lifeboats"). Players play a twostage game. First, each player chooses an element of the partition ("a lifeboat"). Then each player competes for a prize in the subset...

Victorious alliances often fi ght about the spoils of war. We consider experimentally when members of victorious alliances accept a peaceful division of the spoils, and when they fi ght against each other, and how the inability to commit to a peaceful division affects their effort contributions...

We experimentally study endogenous alliance formation and contest effort choices in a generic three-player contest. Differences in intrinsic or extrinsic incentives to expend effort cause self-selection. Weakly motivated players have an incentive to enter into an alliance and to free-ride on...

This paper studies the attack-and-defence game between a web user and a whole set of players over this user's ‘valuable secrets.' The number and type of these valuable secrets are the user's private information. Attempts to tap information as well as privacy protection are costly. The...

We consider two players' choice about the formation of an alliance ahead of conflict in a framework with incomplete information about the strength of co-players. When deciding on alliance formation, players anticipate the self-selection of other players and the informational value of own and...