On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

Juan A. Lacomba, Francisco Lagos, Ernesto Reuben and Frans van Winden ()

Games and Economic Behavior, 2014, vol. 86, issue C, 40-57

Abstract: We introduce three extensions 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: Conflict; Rent-seeking; Appropriation; Peace; Escalation; Tournaments; Contests (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825614000505
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Escalation and De-Escalation of Conflict (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:86:y:2014:i:c:p:40-57

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.03.006

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().