 The evolutionary stability of in-group altruism in productive and destructive group contestsJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 188, issue C, 236-252 Abstract: This article examines the evolutionary stability of other-regarding preferences in a group contest for a prize, which is endogenously determined. In a destructive contest, such as war, contest efforts of all groups decrease the value of the prize. In contrast, in a productive contest, such as a patent race, contest efforts of all groups increase the value of the prize. The indirect evolutionary approach allows to endogenize players’ preferences, that is, the utility weights given by a group member, in her subjective utility function, to the material payoffs of in-group and out-group members. After characterizing the set of evolutionarily stable preference types, I show that the evolutionarily stable degree of in-group altruism is always stronger when the group contest is destructive than when it is productive. Moreover, when the group contest is strongly productive, preference evolution leads to in-group spite. However, a smaller group size and a larger number of competing groups makes this outcome less likely. Keywords: Group contests; Endogenous prize; In-group altruism; Evolutionary stability; Indirect evolutionary approach (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:188:y:2021:i:c:p:236-252 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.05.017 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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