Introducing “Cooperative Push”: How Inefficient Environmental Policy (Sometimes!) Protects the Global Commons Better

In this paper we argue that the incentive structures of the gamesnations play in international environmental negotiations dependupon the choice of environmental policy instruments. Bargainingon the use of some instrument (e.g. an effluent charge) mayput the players into a dilemma game (like Chicken). Negotiationsto apply a different instrument (say, an emission reductionquota) may lead to a cooperation game (like Stag Hunt). The higherthe incentive to cooperate in the type of game which is built upby a specific instrument, the higher is this instrument's``cooperative push''. Of course, comparing two instruments,the one with the higher cooperative push might well be the lessefficient one. In this Paper, we analyse a situation where thehigher cooperative push of an instrument overcompensates thisinstrument's lower efficiency: Aggregate welfare withbilateral cooperation (the equilibrium of Stag Hunt) is higher than withunilateral cooperation (the equilibrium of the Chicken game).The question remains whether sovereign countries decide to playStag Hunt ending up in the welfare superior equilibrium. It isshown below that they do not in an uncoordinated optimising setting.However, we develop a particular frame where the proposedsolution meets the criteria of individual rationality,stability and fairness. It thereby establishes the politically mostdesired result – international cooperation.     

Inequity and risk aversion in sequential public good games

Behavioral hypotheses have recently been introduced into public-choice theory (Ostrom in American Political Science Review 92:1–22, 1998). Nevertheless, the individual intrinsic preferences which drive decisions in social dilemmas have not yet been empirically identified. This paper asks whether risk and inequity preferences are behind agents’ behavior in a sequential public good game. The experimental results show that risk aversion is negatively correlated with the contribution decision of first movers. Second movers who are averse to advantageous inequity free-ride less and reciprocate more than do others. Our results emphasize the importance of strategic uncertainty for the correct understanding of which preferences influence cooperation in social dilemmas.     

European Cooperation on Future Crises: Toward a Public Good?

As crises grow more transnational in origin and effect, managing them effectively will require international cooperation. This article explores the dilemmas inherent to producing common crisis management capacities across national governments. Drawing on the literature related to "international public goods," the article builds an approach for understanding these dilemmas through the lens of collective action and the perverse incentives associated therein. The article applies this approach to cooperation in Europe on an issue that typifies the transnational crisis—the spread of communicable disease—and highlights obstacles to European Union ambitions to build a robust system for disease surveillance and control. Having isolated the obstacles, the article then identifies solutions to facilitate cooperation toward more effectively producing the good in question.     

虚拟世界中的公平演练——以《魔兽世界》为例探讨虚拟世界团队的合作机制

本文以目前风靡全球的网络游戏《魔兽世界》为例,探讨虚拟世界中的团队合作机制。发现:(1)虚拟世界中,玩家并非被动地接受游戏规则,而是与外部游戏设定之间形成了积极互动,从而创造玩家自己的共识契约,体现出极强的主体性;(2)虚拟世界中团队合作真实而复杂,其背后共通的公平理念,是一种理想化的按劳分配的模式,认为每个玩家在电脑前付出的时间都应该得到平等的尊重和回报。这恰是虚拟世界带来的最有意义的经验与启示,充分展现了玩家的智慧及公民意识的养成。     

博弈问题的哲学分析

自纳什以来,非合作博弈理论已经广泛应用于经济学、政治学、社会学、生物学等领域.本文从哲学角度分析了博弈中的理性和合作问题,试图指出,博弈论关于理性和合作的理解是非常单薄的,基本上局限于经济学的理解,而这可能误解人类行为.     

Different goods, different effects: exploring the effects of generalized social trust in large-N collective action

Does generalized social trust help solve large-N collective action problems? This paper argues so, offering a novel explanation for the relationship: People tend to cooperate if they expect others to be cooperating, which implies that people holding generalized social trust more readily cooperate in large-N dilemmas because they expect that most people will cooperate. The paper tests the explanation in a rigorous design. The analyses show a positive, robust effect of generalized social trust on public good provision, but no effect is found in a joint product situation. This supports the hypothesis, indicating that trust specifically enhances cooperation in collective action dilemmas.     

War,pillage, and markets

Neoclassical economic theory has produced an extensive body of knowledge about market exchange based on cooperative relations: private property. This leads to an artificial dichotomy between cooperation and conflict though. It is best to view market exchange as lying along a continuum of conflict and cooperation. Conflict and cooperation are intertwined. From a game theoretic model of Hobbes' world, I show that a number of property rights structures are possible. Each is characterized as possessing varying degrees of conflict and cooperation. Finally, from a repeated game, I show how conflictual relations (mutual predation) may support more cooperative relations (private property). This new equilibrium is sub-game perfect.     

Self‐Organizing Policy Networks: Risk,Partner Selection,and Cooperation in Estuaries

Policy actors seek network contacts to improve individual payoffs in the institutional collective action dilemmas endemic to fragmented policy arenas. The risk hypothesis argues that actors seek bridging relationships (well‐connected, popular partners that maximize their access to information) when cooperation involves low risks, but seek bonding relationships (transitive, reciprocal relationships that maximize credibility) when risks of defection increase. We test this hypothesis in newly developing policy arenas expected to favor relationships that resolve low‐risk dilemmas. A stochastic actor‐based model for network evolution estimated with survey data from 1999 and 2001 in 10 U.S. estuaries finds that actors do tend to select popular actors as partners, which presumably creates a centralized bridging structure capable of efficient information transmission for coordinating policies even without any government mandate. Actors also seek reciprocal bonding relationships supportive of small joint projects and quickly learn whether or not to trust their partners.     

Market Structure,Tariff Lobbying and the Free-Rider Problem

The effect of changes in industry structure on the ability tomaintain a cooperative level of tariff lobbying are analyzed in arepeated game setting in which a simple trigger strategy is theenforcement mechanism. The difficulty of maintaining cooperation isidentified with the minimum discount factor necessary for themaintenance of cooperation. Factors which increase this criticalvalue of the discount parameter are said to make cooperation moredifficult. Some changes in industry structure which reduce measuredconcentration have ambiguous effects, while others may makecooperation among a given group of firms more likely.     

Social Capital and Endogenous Preferences

In this paper we analyze whether social capital can emerge endogenously from a process of preference evolution. We define social capital as preferences that promote voluntary cooperation in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma game. We investigate how the endogenous preferences depend on the amount of information individuals have about each other’s preferences. When there is sufficiently much information, maximal social capital emerges. In general, the level of social capital varies positively with the amount of information. Our results may add to an understanding of the factors that determine a society’s ability to generate cooperative outcomes.     

Functional unpleasantness: the evolutionary logic of righteous resentment

Economics experiments and everyday experience cast doubt on the assumption that people are self-interested. In divide-the-dollar ultimatum games, participants turn down offers that would make them objectively better off. Similarly, drivers stuck in a traffic jam fume at cars cruising by on the shoulder. Many stuck drivers would punish the moving ones if they could, even at some cost to themselves. Such strategies appear irrational because they make the punisher worse off than accepting the situation or offer. We examine explanations for costly punishment and relax the presumption that punishers themselves prefer cooperation, using evolutionary game theory to show how uncooperative punishers can support cooperation.     

When Doves Cry: International Rivalry, Unreciprocated Cooperation, and Leadership Turnover

Varied research traditions suggest that dovish leaders will be thrown out of office under harsh external circumstances. Below, I elaborate a model of rivalry maintenance that draws on and refines the insight from studies of leadership tenure and foreign policy. Specifically, I expect a leader who offers unreciprocated cooperation to a rival (a dove) to be more likely to be deselected from power than a leader that takes a harder line vis-à-vis the rival (a hawk). I test this expectation using event history techniques and data spanning the 1950–1990 time period and find strong evidence that dovish leaders pay an electoral price within a rivalry context. The findings suggest an internationally contingent domestic incentive to maintain rivalry and conflict over time .     

“Same Bed,Different Dreams” and “Riding Tiger” Dilemmas: China’s Rise and International Relations/Political Economy

This paper seeks to present a framework for understanding the impact of China’s rise on the established international order with a special focus on the contradictions and dilemmas facing both China and the order around it. It suggests heuristic insights from two Chinese cultural and linguistic metaphysics in order to denote the dynamic and interactive relationship between the rise of China and the existing order in terms of both opportunities and challenges. The authors argue that both China and the existing order have been going through periods of “sleeping in the same bed with different dreams”, and now they are in the stage of “riding tiger” in which both sides face dilemmas in their complicated and complex relationship. The paper concludes that the rise of China and the existing order will continue to be intertwined in a dialectic of waxing and waning, and flux and reflux. In order for each to find a regional and global role which the other will accept and support both sides will have to go through a considerable period of struggle, tension and adjustment.     

Strategic agricultural trade policy interdependence and the exchange rate: A game theoretic analysis

Strategic Agricultural Trade Policy Interdependence is modeled using a game theoretic framework. The model distinguishes between the European Community, the United States and a politically passive rest-of-the-world. Particular emphasis is placed on the effect of the exchange rate on the equilibrium outcome of this game. Without compensatory payments to those with the highest political influence, the results suggest that only modest reform is possible. With compensation, liberalization occurs but free trade is not obtained. Simulations also indicate that the U.S. gains incentive to reduce protection given a depreciation of the dollar, while incentive to liberalize trade policies decreases as the dollar appreciates. Research was supported by Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station project 14065 “Economic Integration and Disintegration in Europe: Implications for U.S. Agriculture.”     

The second-order dilemma of public goods and capital accumulation

The second-order dilemma arises from each individual’s incentive to free ride on a mechanism to solve the public goods provision problem (the first-order dilemma). We show by a voluntary participation game that if the depreciation rate is low, public goods can be accumulated through voluntary groups for provision, and that the accumulation is effective in solving the second-order dilemma. This analysis also shows that population growth increases the accumulation of public goods in the long run.     

Negotiating Education Reform: Teacher Evaluations and Incentives in Chile (1990–2010)

Reforms designed to improve the quality of teaching by reforming personnel practices, such as pay for performance arrangements, usually run into opposition from well‐organized teacher unions that can either block reform in the short run or undermine it over the longer term. The experience of a series of reforms that introduced collective and individual pay incentives for teachers in Chile from 1990 to 2010 provide a rare example of ongoing negotiation with the teacher union that resulted in an institutionalized structure of incentive pay for teachers as well as widespread attitudes of sustained support among teachers for performance pay. Chile offers an important example of how sustained change in incentive pay can be achieved through ongoing negotiation.     

Public good provision in a repeated game: The role of small fixed costs of participation

Pecorino (1998) models tariff lobbying in a repeated game and finds that cooperation can be maintained in a large group, even though tariff lobbying provides a rival public good to interest group members. We add small fixed costs of participation to this model and find that cooperation must break down in large groups. By contrast, if a fully rival public good directly enters the utility function, then cooperation is possible in large groups, even with small participation costs. Thus, we find only partial support for Olson’s (1965) proposition that collective action must break down in large groups.     

The evolution of sharing rules in rent seeking contests: Incentives crowd out cooperation

Modern societies are characterized by competing organizations that rely predominantly on incentive schemes to align the behavior of their members with the organizations’ objectives. This study contributes to explaining why in so many cases incentive schemes have gradually crowded out cooperation as an organization device. Our explanation does not draw on free-riding, the obvious Achilles’ heel of cooperation, but relies completely on fundamental group contest mechanisms. By investigating a canonical rent seeking model and adopting an evolutionary perspective, the analysis identifies shortcomings in previous results, sets the record straight, and explains why the process of incentivizing organizations is protracted.     

Modelling Secessions from Municipalities

Under what conditions are quests for secession successful? Current debates in Scandinavia on the appropriate size of municipalities are taken as a point of departure for answering this question. I set out to analyse what processes are triggered through mergers of small political units into larger ones. The Swedish experience is analysed as an empirical illustration. A game‐theoretical model is constructed, in which I highlight questions of ideology, power and strategy when analysing secessions. I conclude that mergers, such as those in Sweden between 1952 and 1974, create a built‐in conflict in the larger unit. Certain geographical parts of the political unit get the worst of it in a conflict concerning resources, which will create tension based on geographical location. If these conflicts are not solved, questions of secession will inevitably be raised. In the Swedish context the law is phrased in such a way that the government decides whether or not secession will be allowed. The game‐theoretical model therefore suggests that campaigns for secession will be successful if the seceding part (SP) (a) meets the required physical criteria (which concern size and financial predisposition), (b) the quest for secession enjoys strong public support and (c) the party in government takes a benevolent view of municipality separations.