On the Escalation and De-Escalation of Conflict

Juan A. Lacomba (), Francisco Lagos, Ernesto Reuben and Frans van Winden ()
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Juan A. Lacomba: Universidad de Granada

No 7492, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We introduce three variations of the Hirshleifer-Skaperdas conflict game to study experimentally the effects of post-conflict behavior and repeated interaction on the allocation of effort between production and appropriation. Without repeated interaction, destruction of resources by defeated players can lead to lower appropriative efforts and higher overall efficiency. With repeated interaction, appropriative efforts are considerably reduced because some groups manage to avoid fighting altogether, often after substantial initial conflict. To attain peace, players must first engage in costly signaling by making themselves vulnerable and by forgoing the possibility to appropriate the resources of defeated opponents.

Keywords: contests; appropriation; conflict; tournaments; rent-seeking; peace; escalation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Games and Economic Behavior, 2014, 86, 40-57

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Journal Article: On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict (2014)
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