This paper examines behavior (the oretically and experimentally) in a two-stage group contest where the fi rst stage comprises of intra - group contests, followed by an inter-group contest in the second stage. Rewards accrue only to the members of the winning group in the inter-group contest,...

Explanations are provided for why governments do as they do in agriculture. Alternative frameworks are assessed to explain government policy including collective action and politician-voter interaction models. Several key patterns of policies are analyzed including the “developmental...

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004: 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...

The paper develops a sociological approach for understanding the role of expectations in collective action. It argues that an approach based on expectations is better suited to explain collective action in episodes of social change than existing sociological theories. Two case studies - one on...

Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations people face a dilemma about making individually costly but...