When the mortality rate is high, repeated interaction alone may not sustain cooperation, and religion may play an important role in shaping economic institutions. This insight explains why during the fourteenth century, when plagues decimated populations and the church promoted the doctrine of...

When the mortality rate is high, repeated interaction alone may not sustain cooperation, and religion may play an important role in shaping economic institutions. This insight explains why during the fourteenth century, when plagues decimated populations and the church promoted the doctrine of...

Governments fighting terrorists have many tactical options, yet these options often yield unintended and counterproductive consequences. This paper models a terrorist organization, a religious group from which the terrorists recruit suicide bombers, and the society in which the terrotists are...

Governments fighting terrorists have many tactical options, yet these options often yield unintended and counterproductive consequences. This paper models a terrorist organization, a religious group from which the terrorists recruit suicide bombers, and the society in which the terrorists are...

We examine the game theoretic properties of a model of crime first introduced by Short, Brantingham, and D'Orsogna (Short et al. 2010) as the SBD Adversarial Game. We identify the rationalizable strategies and one-shot equilibria under mul- tiple equilibrium refinements. We further show that...

Many social and economic networks emerge among actors that only partially observe the network when forming network ties. We ask: what types of network architectures form when actors have limited observation, and does limited observation lead to less efficient structures? We report numerous...

Why do legal disputes ever go to trial? Prior research emphasizes the role of mistakes, irrationalities, or asymmetric information because rational litigants with complete or symmetric information should choose pre-trial settlements over the costs and risks of trial. Using a dynamic...

We examine the optimal disruption of dark (covert and illegal) networks. Of central importance is that an interventionist will generally have incomplete information about the dark network's architecture. We derive the optimal disruption strategy in a stylized model of dark network intervention...

We examine a conflictual setting in which adversaries cannot contract on an enforcement variable (arms) and where the future strategic positions of adversaries are very different when there is open conflict than when there is settlement. We show that, as the future becomes more important in this...

Individuals in social networks often imperfectly monitor others' network relationships and have incomplete information about the value of forming new relationships. This paper introduces the Generalized Conjectural Equilibrium (GCE) concept for such settings and completely characterizes the set...