We study collective action under adverse incentives: each member of the group has a given budget ('use-it-or-lose-it') that is his private information and that can be used for contributions to make the group win a prize and for internal fights about this very prize. Even in the face of such...

This paper considers incentives for information acquisition ahead of conflicts. First, we characterize the (unique) equilibrium of the all-pay auction between two players with one-sided asymmetric information where one player has private information about his valuation. Then, we use ou rresults...

The generic alliance game considers players in an alliance who fight against an external enemy. After victory, the alliance may break up, and its members fight against each other about the spoils of the victory. Our experimental analysis of this game shows: In-group solidarity vanishes after the...

We investigate redistributive taxation in a political economy experiment and determine how different patterns of social mobility affect the choices of redistributional taxes. In the absence of social mobility, voters choose tax rates that are very well in line with the prediction derived in the...

We investigate redistributive taxation in a political economy experiment and determine how different patterns of social mobility affect the choices of redistributional taxes. In the absence of social mobility, voters choose tax rates that are very well in line with the prediction derived in the...