This short paper aims to find an empirical evidence that al Qaeda behaves as a contest organizer rewarding an indivisible prize – namely, official membership and economic rewards – to candidate extremists groups. Would-be terrorists must then compete with each other to prove their commitment...

This paper finds an empirical evidence that al Qaeda behaves as a contest organizer rewarding a prize to candidate extremist groups. Would-be terrorists must then compete with each other to prove their commitment and ability. Hence to maximize their own probability of winning the prize, each...

Arguments are statements used to persuade someone or in support of a claim. However, these are not perfect and part are be exploited by the opponent to build its own argumentation. In this paper we present a litigation success function (LSF) that considers the quality of the plainti¤ and...

A contest is a situation in which individuals or groups expend costly resources while competing to win a specific prize. The variety of economic situations that can be described as contests has attracted enormous attention from economic theorists. Despite the extensive theoretical research of...

We experimentally investigate the effect of social identification and information feedback on individual behavior in contests. In all treatments we find significant over-expenditure of effort relative to the standard theoretical predictions. Identifying subjects through photo display decreases...

Due to the high costs of conflict both in theory and practice, we examine and experimentally test the conditions under which conflict between asymmetric agents can be resolved. We model conflict as a two-agent rent-seeking contest for an indivisible prize. Before conflict arises, both agents may...

In this paper I will analyse the redistribution of income amongst n generations using the Single-mindedness Theory. I will introduce a new expression for the balanced-budget constraint, no longer based on lump- sum transfers as in the traditional literature, but rather on more realistic labour...

We analyze how a contest organizer chooses the winner when the contestants.efforts are already exerted and commitment to the use of a given contest success function is not possible. We define the notion of rationalizability in mixed-strategies to capture such a situation. Our approach allows to...

We apply an indirect evolutionary approach to players' perceived prize valuations in contests. Evolution in finite populations leads to preferences that overstate the prize's material value and induce overexpenditure. We establish an equivalence between the behavior evolutionarily stable...