Heuristic Schelling: economy of organized crime

This article proposes a reading of the armed conflict from an evolutionary design that takes into account the concept of private protection agencies in the works of Schelling. Their aim is to assess the dynamics of conflict and changes from its author's scientific output. A context of conflicts that includes new expressions of violence and the relative failure of the paramilitary reintegration involves using new analytical models (argumentation, game theory and inconsistent information). The recent evolution of emerging gangs and their expansion into areas that were paramilitary camps requires monitoring not only of the government and the authorities, but those investigating the conflict in the present tense. The author provides heuristic research support from Schelling’s theory of strategy, recent contributions to the relationship between organized crime and drug cartels.Colombia, Government, Civil War, Latin America, Security, Protection Agencies.

Authentic Happiness & Meaning at Law Firms

We advocate that law firms can and should foster authentic happiness and meaning in the professional lives of their associates. Based upon empirical and experimental research in behavioral economics and positive psychology, we consider how law firms can implement policies to promote authentic happiness and meaning in their associates\u27 professional lives. We also believe that law schools can and should help to reduce the anxiety, stress, and unhappiness that individuals feel as law students and help them develop abilities to achieve meaningful careers as law firm associates. We provide a guide as to how law firms and law schools can design policies and procedures to nudge people towards achieving more authentic happiness and meaning in their professional (and personal) lives if people so desire

Equilibrium Vengeance

This paper introduces two ideas, emotional state dependent utility components (ESDUCs), and evolutionary perfect Bayesian equilibrium (EPBE). Using a simple extensive form game, we illustrate the efficiency-enhancing role of a powerful ESDUC, the vengeance motive. Incorporating behavioral noise and observational noise leads to a range of (short run) Perfect Bayesian equilibria (PBE) involving both vengeful and non-vengeful types. We then derive two (long run) EPBE, one where both types survive and reap mutual gains, and a second where only the non-vengeful type survives and there are no mutual gains.negative reciprocity, perfect Bayesian equilibrium, evolutionary perfect Bayesian equilibrium, emotional state dependent utility

The logic of the violence in the civil war: the armed conflict in Colombia

This paper proposes a reading of the armed conflict from an evolutionary design that takes into account the Logic of Violence in the Civil War. Their aim is to assess the dynamics of conflict and changes from its author's scientific output. A context of conflicts that includes new expressions of violence and the relative failure of the paramilitary reintegration involves using new analytical models (argumentation, game theory and inconsistent information). The recent evolution of emerging gangs and their expansion into areas that were paramilitary camps requires monitoring not only of the government and the authorities, but those investigating the conflict in the present tense. The author provides heuristic research support from Schelling’s theory of strategy, Nozick’s agencies and the protection, and Gambetta’s recent contributions to the relationship between organized crime and drug cartels.Civil_war, Colombia, armed conflict, strategic_theory, Gambetta, Nozick, Schelling

The Manager\u27s Share

It is sometimes argued in the corporate governance literature that the total share of corporate value that can be extracted by a manager is fixed and independent of the avenues through which value is extracted. Shareholders need not worry about an activity such as insider trading, the story goes, because any profits achieved by a manager through insider trading will simply offset conventional compensation. This Article challenges that idea and argues that whether one views the manager\u27s share as being capped by external market forces, set by an optimal principal/agent contract, or limited by saliency and outrage in accordance with the managerial power view of corporate governance, the total value that can and will be appropriated by managers will be a function of the number and type of avenues through which value can be appropriated. Although analysis of each of the corporate governance mechanisms results in the same directional prediction, the magnitude of the impact of expanding channels of appropriation depends on which mechanism dominates. For example, potential avenues of appropriation that are easily monitored and under the unilateral control of the directors, such as bonuses or perks, should have little effect on incremental appropriation under the optimal contracting model, but could have significant impact under the managerial power model. A review of the relevant empirical literature suggests that additional avenues of appropriation do indeed lead to greater overall appropriation. The evidence, moreover, is largely inconsistent with the optimal contracting view. This analysis highlights a largely overlooked cost of compensation complexity: In all likelihood, the increasing complexity and opacity of executive compensation over the last two decades has contributed to the overall increase in managerial appropriation

Equilibrium Vengeance

The efficiency-enhancing role of the vengeance motive is illustrated in a simple social dilemma game in extensive form. Incorporating behavioral noise and observational noise in random interactions in large groups leads to seven continuous families of (short run) Perfect Bayesian equilibria (PBE) that involve both vengeful and non-vengeful types. A new long run evolutionary equilibrium concept, Evolutionary Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium (EPBE), shrinks the equilibrium set to two points. In one EPBE, only the non-vengeful type survives and there are no mutual gains. In the other EPBE, both types survive and reap mutual gains.reciprocity; vengeance; evolutionary perfect Bayesian equilibrium; social dilemmas

The evolution of leader-follower reciprocity: The theory of service-for-prestige

Copyright © 2014 Price and Van Vugt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.We describe the service-for-prestige theory of leadership, which proposes that voluntary leader–follower relations evolved in humans via a process of reciprocal exchange that generated adaptive benefits for both leaders and followers. We propose that although leader–follower relations first emerged in the human lineage to solve problems related to information sharing and social coordination, they ultimately evolved into exchange relationships whereby followers could compensate leaders for services which would otherwise have been prohibitively costly for leaders to provide. In this exchange, leaders incur costs to provide followers with public goods, and in return, followers incur costs to provide leaders with prestige (and associated fitness benefits). Because whole groups of followers tend to gain from leader-provided public goods, and because prestige is costly for followers to produce, the provisioning of prestige to leaders requires solutions to the “free rider” problem of disrespectful followers (who benefit from leader services without sharing the costs of producing prestige). Thus service-for-prestige makes the unique prediction that disrespectful followers of beneficial leaders will be targeted by other followers for punitive sentiment and/or social exclusion. Leader–follower relations should be more reciprocal and mutually beneficial when leaders and followers have more equal social bargaining power. However, as leaders gain more relative power, and their high status becomes less dependent on their willingness to pay the costs of benefitting followers, service-for-prestige predicts that leader–follower relations will become based more on leaders’ ability to dominate and exploit rather than benefit followers. We review evidential support for a set of predictions made by service-for-prestige, and discuss how service-for-prestige relates to social neuroscience research on leadership

"You Little Creep": Evidence of Blatant Dehumanization of Short Groups

Physical cues influence social judgments of others. For example, shorter individuals are evaluated less positively than taller individuals. Here, we demonstrate that height also impacts one of the most consequential intergroup judgments - attributions of humanity - and explore whether this effect is modulated by the tendency to value hierarchy maintenance. In Study 1, the shorter participants perceived a range of out-groups to be, the more they dehumanized them, and this tended to be particularly pronounced among those scoring high on social dominance orientation (SDO). In Study 2, participants dehumanized an out-group more when they were led to believe that it was relatively short. Finally, Study 3 applied a reverse correlation approach, demonstrating that participants in general, and especially those scoring high on SDO, represented shorter groups in ways less consistent with full humanity than they represented taller groups. Together, this research demonstrates that basic physical height cues shape the perceived humanity of out-groups