More order with less law: on contract enforcement, trust, and crowding

Most contracts, whether between voters and politicians or between house owners and contractors, are incomplete. “More law,” it typically is assumed, increases the likelihood of contract performance by increasing the probability of enforcement and/or the cost of breach. We examine a contractual relationship in which the first mover has to decide whether she wants to enter a contract without knowing whether the second mover will perform. We analyze how contract enforceability affects individual performance for exogenous preferences. Then we apply a dynamic model of preference adaptation and find that economic incentives have a nonmonotonic effect on behavior. Individuals perform a contract when enforcement is strong or weak but not with medium enforcement probabilities: Trustworthiness is “crowded in” with weak and “crowded out” with medium enforcement. In a laboratory experiment we test our model’s implications and find support for the crowding prediction. Our finding is in line with the recent work on the role of contract enforcement and trust in formerly Communist countries

Win-stay-lose-learn promotes cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game

Holding on to one's strategy is natural and common if the later warrants success and satisfaction. This goes. against widespread simulation practices of evolutionary games, where players frequently consider changing their strategy even though their payoffs may be marginally different than those of the other players. Inspired by this observation, we introduce an aspiration-based win-stay-lose-learn strategy updating rule into the spatial prisoner's dilemma game. The rule is simple and intuitive, foreseeing strategy changes only by dissatisfied players, who then attempt to adopt the strategy of one of their nearest neighbors, while the strategies of satisfied players are not subject to change. We find that the proposed win-stay-lose-learn rule promote the evolution of cooperation, and it does so very robustly and independently of the initial conditions. I fact, we show that even a minute initial fraction of cooperators may be sufficient to eventually secure a higly cooperative final state. In addition to extensive simulation results that support our conclusions, we also present results obtained by means of the pair approximation of the studied game. Our findings continue the success story of related win-stay strategy updating rules, and by doing so reveal new ways of resolving the prisoner's dilemma

Do not prime hawks with doves : the impact of dispositions and situation-specific features on the emergence of cooperative behavior in mixed-motive situations.

In four experiments, we examined the impact of the nature and consistency of people's social value orientations on the emergence of cooperative behavior in conditions of neutral, morality or might priming. In line with Van Lange (2000), we expected social value orientations to have a greater impact in ambiguous (neutral priming) than in unambiguous (morality and might priming) situations. We also expected the later moderation to be higher among participants low in consistency (see also Hertel and Fiedler, 1998). Overall, participants' behavior shifted in prime-consistent ways. However, cooperation was reduced among high consistent pro-selfs primed with morality concepts. Experiments 2-4 replicate and generalize these findings, and reveal that high consistent pro-selfs exploited partners believed to be cooperative as a result of morality priming. Implications of these results are discussed in the wider context of interdependence theory, and in the context of automatic behavior effects.

Effects of Mundane Status on Cooperation, Competition and Communication Patterns Between Members of Dissimilar Statuses

Cooperation and competition, in some form, pervade most aspects of mankind's life. This study was done in an attempt to measure behaviorally and verbally, human reaction to others in a potentially competitive situation. Since the present study is concerned with the mundane realism of the experimental situation, a point that seems to have been overlooked in most studies relating competition to status, there was very little guidance outside that provided by my adviser, Dr. Bob Helm. Since the present study was an early attempt in obtaining high degrees of realism, several aspects of it are purely investigatory. In particular, studies which compare message usage with behavioral correlates of competition and cooperation are in the pioneering stages of inquiry. In this aspect the present study represents pilot work. Perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of this study was obtaining the participation of high status members. My special thanks to members of the Third ROTC region without whose help this study would have been impossible.Psycholog

Rational Choice, Reputation, and Human Rights Treaties

Part I of this Review sets forth Guzman\u27s general theory of international law with specific consideration of the way reputation influences state behavior. Part II then tests Guzman\u27s overarching thesis by applying it to human rights treaties and concludes that explaining states\u27 entry into human rights treaties requires a broader conception of reputation than Rational Choice allows