Bargaining and Influence in Conflict Situations

[Excerpt] This chapter examines bargaining as an influence process through which actors attempt to resolve a social conflict. Conflict occurs when two or more interdependent actors have incompatible preferences and perceive or anticipate resistance from each other (Blalock 1989; Kriesberg 1982). Bargaining is a basic form of goal-directed action that involves both intentions to influence and efforts by each actor to carry out these intentions. Tactics are verbal and/or nonverbal actions designed to maneuver oneself into a favorable position vis-a-vis another or to reach some accommodation. Our treatment of bargaining subsumes the concept of negotiation (see Morley and Stephenson 1977). This chapter is organized around a conceptual framework that distinguishes basic types of bargaining contexts. We begin by introducing the framework and then present an overview of and analyze theoretical and empirical work on each type of bargaining context

Intellectual Property and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Game Theory Justification of Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets

In this article, I will offer an argument for the protection of intellectual property based on individual self-interest and prudence. In large part, this argument will parallel considerations that arise in a prisoner’s dilemma game. In brief, allowing content to be unprotected in terms of free access leads to a sub-optimal outcome where creation and innovation are suppressed. Adopting the institutions of copyright, patent, and trade secret is one way to avoid these sub-optimal results

Social dilemmas in an online social network: the structure and evolution of cooperation

We investigate two paradigms for studying the evolution of cooperation--Prisoner's Dilemma and Snowdrift game in an online friendship network obtained from a social networking site. We demonstrate that such social network has small-world property and degree distribution has a power-law tail. Besides, it has hierarchical organizations and exhibits disassortative mixing pattern. We study the evolutionary version of the two types of games on it. It is found that enhancement and sustainment of cooperative behaviors are attributable to the underlying network topological organization. It is also shown that cooperators can survive when confronted with the invasion of defectors throughout the entire ranges of parameters of both games. The evolution of cooperation on empirical networks is influenced by various network effects in a combined manner, compared with that on model networks. Our results can help understand the cooperative behaviors in human groups and society.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

ACE Models of Endogenous Interactions

Various approaches used in Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE) to model endogenously determined interactions between agents are discussed. This concerns models in which agents not only (learn how to) play some (market or other) game, but also (learn to) decide with whom to do that (or not).Endogenous interaction, Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE)

Fairness Emergence in Reputation Systems

Reputation systems have been used to support users in making decisions under uncertainty or risk that is due to the autonomous behavior of others. Research results support the conclusion that reputation systems can protect against exploitation by unfair users, and that they have an impact on the prices and income of users. This observation leads to another question: can reputation systems be used to assure or increase the fairness of resource distribution? This question has a high relevance in social situations where, due to the absence of established authorities or institutions, agents need to rely on mutual trust relations in order to increase fairness of distribution. This question can be formulated as a hypothesis: in reputation (or trust management) systems, fairness should be an emergent property. The notion of fairness can be precisely defined and investigated based on the theory of equity. In this paper, we investigate the Fairness Emergence hypothesis in reputation systems and prove that , under certain conditions, the hypothesis is valid for open and closed systems, even in unstable system states and in the presence of adversaries. Moreover, we investigate the sensitivity of Fairness Emergence and show that an improvement of the reputation system strengthens the emergence of fairness. Our results are confirmed using a trace-driven simulation from a large Internet auction site.Trust, Simulation, Fairness, Equity, Emergence, Reputation System

Medium Communication and Testing of Cooperative or Competitive Tendencies using Prisoner's Dilemma Games

This study aims to test whether the media used can predict the individual's tendency to collaborate (cooperatively) or compete in the negotiation process, and whether the use of certain media affects the maximum joint payoff of the negotiation process. This research is expected to contribute theoretically to the development of concepts concerning media richness and electronic negotiations as well as prisoner's dilemma games. This study uses an experimental design to explain the tendencies of collaboration and competition by using Prisoner's Dilemma Games. The participants are students from management programs at two universities in Indonesia.  There are some limitations in this article, namely, the research model still has limitations in explaining the behavior of negotiators in making decisions, especially on negotiations with computer media. In fact, the use of computer media in negotiations encounters a number of geographic constraints, ie distance and time differences which may greatly affect the outcome of negotiations under different conditions of the study. Keywords: medium, negotiation, cooperative, competitive, Prisoner’s dillema games, payoff, outcome DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-15-03 Publication date:August 31st 202

A Study on Platform's New Strategy in Media 2.0 Era - Based on “Keystone” concept & Google case

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a new strategy of the platform in Media 2.0 era. This goal is approached by firstly examining conceptual change of the platform strategy from mass media world (Media 1.0) to micro media world (Media 2.0). Then, it will discuss "Keystone" strategy by Iansiti & Levien (2004) who introduced four different types of platform and will give an example, Google. The data shows, how Google's keystone strategy could be successfully accomplished with three sources for value creation, revelation, aggregation and plasticity, and how healthy it is in terms of productivity, robustness, and niche creation. Finally, an applicable framework to Media 2.0 will be constructed on the basis sources for value creation and "Keystone" capabilities of ecosystem management. Three main parts of the keystone strategy are the openness, synchronization, and mass customization focus. --Media platform,Keystone,ecosystem

Coordination and Conflict: The Persistent Relevance of Networks in International Financial Regulation

Over the last two decades, scholarly enthusiasm about transnational regulatory networks has seen something of a boom-and-bust cycle. Such networks – informal groupings of mid-level national officials, convened to develop nonbinding “soft law” norms of behavior in specialized fields of regulation – were identified as an important new phenomenon, were studied widely, and came to be seen as central pillars of the international legal order, especially in financial regulation. Yet today, regulatory networks go largely unmentioned in polite academic conversation: a kind of “he-who-must-not-be-named” of international law.Among the many critiques of transnational networks that have contributed to this decline in interest in and engagement with them, this article seeks to respond to one in particular: the notion that the efficacy of regulatory networks is limited to those situations in which conflict is absent. To the contrary, once we understand the game theoretic dynamic that underlies the operation of networks – including Thomas Schelling’s seminal work on coordination games, focal points, and salience – regulatory networks may be quite effective in the face of conflict. At a minimum, a role for networks should not be categorically denied, absent some particularized indicia of their lack of utility in the given setting. As a matter of comparative institutional analysis, they may continue to represent the best means available to us – both in international financial regulation and in other regulatory arena

On closer inspection : reviewing the debate on whether fish cooperate to inspect predators

This work was funded by an EASTBIO DTP scholarship to A. Li Veiros.Cooperative behaviours, which benefit a recipient, are widespread in the animal kingdom; yet their evolution is not straightforward. Reciprocity, i.e., cooperating with previously experienced cooperative partners, has been suggested to underly cooperation, but has been contested throughout the years. Once a textbook example of reciprocity was cooperative predator inspection, where one or several individuals leave their group to approach a potential threat. Each can at any point stop or retreat, increasing the risk for its partner. It was suggested that inspecting individuals follow a specific reciprocal strategy called tit-for-tat, i.e., cooperating on the first move and then copying the partner's last move. Numerous studies provide evidence to support the claim that fish cooperate to inspect predators, including three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), guppies (Poecilia reticulata) and minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus). However, over the past few decades some scholars have expressed scepticism whether predator inspection is indeed a cooperative behaviour or rather a case of by-product mutualism, which describes behaviours that benefit a partner as a corollary of an otherwise selfish behaviour. For instance, it has been shown that pairs of fish moving in unfamiliar environments appear to coordinate movements even in the absence of predators. Many studies have also used coarse measures of overall approach rates towards predators rather than the fine-grained analyses necessary to infer tit-for-tat in cooperative inspections. Now is the time to return to the question of cooperative predator inspection with new tools and approaches to resolve a decades-old debate.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe