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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Religion And Growth, Sascha O. Becker, Jared Rubin, Ludger Woessmann
Religion And Growth, Sascha O. Becker, Jared Rubin, Ludger Woessmann
ESI Working Papers
We use the elements of a macroeconomic production function—physical capital, human capital, labor, and technology—together with standard growth models to frame the role of religion in economic growth. Unifying a growing literature, we argue that religion can enhance or impinge upon economic growth through all four elements because it shapes individual preferences, societal norms, and institutions. Religion affects physical capital accumulation by influencing thrift and financial development. It affects human capital through both religious and secular education. It affects population and labor by influencing work effort, fertility, and the demographic transition. And it affects total factor productivity by constraining or …
Conflict In The Pool: A Field Experiment, Loukas Balafoutas, Marco Faravelli, Roman Sheremeta
Conflict In The Pool: A Field Experiment, Loukas Balafoutas, Marco Faravelli, Roman Sheremeta
ESI Working Papers
We conduct a field experiment on conflict in swimming pools. When all lanes are occupied, an actor joins the least crowded lane and asks one of the swimmers to move to another lane. The lane represents a contested scarce resource. We vary the actor’s valuation (high and low) for the good through the message they deliver. Also, we take advantage of the natural variation in the number of swimmers to proxy for their valuation. Consistent with theoretical predictions, a swimmer’s propensity to engage in conflict increases in scarcity (incentive effect) and decreases in the actor’s valuation (discouragement effect). We complement …
Monitoring War Destruction From Space Using Machine Learning, Hannes Mueller, Andre Groeger, Jonathan Hersh, Andrea Matranga, Joan Serrat
Monitoring War Destruction From Space Using Machine Learning, Hannes Mueller, Andre Groeger, Jonathan Hersh, Andrea Matranga, Joan Serrat
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Satellite imagery is becoming ubiquitous. Research has demonstrated that artificial intelligence applied to satellite imagery holds promise for automated detection of war-related building destruction. While these results are promising, monitoring in real-world applications requires high precision, especially when destruction is sparse and detecting destroyed buildings is equivalent to looking for a needle in a haystack. We demonstrate that exploiting the persistent nature of building destruction can substantially improve the training of automated destruction monitoring. We also propose an additional machine-learning stage that leverages images of surrounding areas and multiple successive images of the same area, which further improves detection significantly. …
Shutdown Policies And Worldwide Conflict, Nicolas Berman, Mathieu Couttenier, Nathalie Monnet, Rohit Ticku
Shutdown Policies And Worldwide Conflict, Nicolas Berman, Mathieu Couttenier, Nathalie Monnet, Rohit Ticku
ESI Working Papers
We provide real-time evidence on the impact of Covid-19 restrictions policies on conflicts globally. We use daily information on conflict events and government policy responses to limit the spread of coronavirus to study how conflict levels vary following shutdown and lockdown policies. We use the staggered implementation of restriction policies across countries to identify their effect on conflict incidence and intensity. Our results show that imposing a nation-wide shutdown reduces the likelihood of daily conflict by around 9 percentage points. The reduction is driven by a drop in the incidence of battles, protests and violence against civilians. Across actors the …
Romantic Resilience: Fractal Conflict Dynamics And Dating Satisfaction, Melanie Reilly, David Pincus
Romantic Resilience: Fractal Conflict Dynamics And Dating Satisfaction, Melanie Reilly, David Pincus
Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters
Existing research demonstrates that numerous psychosocial dynamics display fractal properties. Fractal structures are characterized by branch-like patterns that are self-similar and consist of exponentially more small events compared to large events. Examples include: shifts in physiological arousal; shifts in self-esteem; patterns of traits within personality; and recurrences in behavioral flows and small group interaction dynamics. Furthermore, across various psychological (and other natural science domains), these fractal patterns have been shown to provide resilience to complex adaptive systems by allowing for flexibility in response to changing adaptive pressures. Specifically, fractal dynamics allow systems to adjust on both a large or small …
A Full Characterization Of Best-Response Functions In The Lottery Colonel Blotto Game, Dan Kovenock, David Rojo Arjona
A Full Characterization Of Best-Response Functions In The Lottery Colonel Blotto Game, Dan Kovenock, David Rojo Arjona
ESI Working Papers
We fully characterize best-response functions in Colonel Blotto games with lottery contest success functions.
The Supply Side Determinants Of Territory And Conflict, Jordan Adamson, Erik O. Kimbrough
The Supply Side Determinants Of Territory And Conflict, Jordan Adamson, Erik O. Kimbrough
ESI Working Papers
What determines the geographic extent of territory? We microfound and extend Boulding’s “Loss of Strength Gradient” to predict the extensive and intensive margins of conflict across space. We show how economies of scale in the production of violence and varying costs of projecting violence at a distance combine to affect the geographic distribution of conflict and territory. We test and probe the boundaries of this model in an experiment varying the fixed costs of conflict entry. As predicted, higher fixed costs increase the probability of exclusive territories; median behavior closely tracks equilibrium predictions in all treatments.
Models Of Intragroup Conflict In Management: A Literature Review, Matthew W. Mccarter, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Darcy Fudge Kamal, H. Min Bang, Steven J. Hyde, Reshma Maredia
Models Of Intragroup Conflict In Management: A Literature Review, Matthew W. Mccarter, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Darcy Fudge Kamal, H. Min Bang, Steven J. Hyde, Reshma Maredia
Business Faculty Articles and Research
The study of intragroup dynamics in management studies views conflict as a contingency process that can benefit or harm a group based of characteristics of the group and context. We review five models of intragroup conflict in management studies. These models include diversity-conflict and behavioral negotiation models that focus primarily on conflict within a group of people; social exchange and transaction cost economics models that focus primarily on conflict within a group of firms; and social dilemma models that focus on conflict in collectives of people, organizations, communities, and generations. The review is constituted by summarizing the insights of each …
War And Conflict In Economics: Theories, Applications, And Recent Trends, Erik O. Kimbrough, Kevin Laughren, Roman M. Sheremeta
War And Conflict In Economics: Theories, Applications, And Recent Trends, Erik O. Kimbrough, Kevin Laughren, Roman M. Sheremeta
ESI Working Papers
We review the main economic models of war and conflict. These models vary in details, but their implications are qualitatively consistent, highlighting key commonalities across a variety of conflict settings. Recent empirical literature, employing both laboratory and field data, in many cases confirms the basic implications of conflict theory. However, this literature also presents important challenges to the way economists traditionally model conflict. We finish our review by suggesting ways to address these challenges.
A Study Of The Triggers Of Conflict And Emotional Reactions, Michael Caldera, Michael T. Mcbride, Matthew W. Mccarter, Roman M. Sheremeta
A Study Of The Triggers Of Conflict And Emotional Reactions, Michael Caldera, Michael T. Mcbride, Matthew W. Mccarter, Roman M. Sheremeta
ESI Publications
We study three triggers of conflict and explore their resultant emotional reactions in a laboratory experiment. Economists suggest that the primary trigger of conflict is monetary incentives. Social psychologists suggest that conflicts are often triggered by fear. Finally, evolutionary biologists suggest that a third trigger is uncertainty about an opponent’s desire to cause harm. Consistent with the predictions from economics, social psychology, and evolutionary biology, we find that conflict originates from all three triggers. The three triggers differently impact the frequency of conflict, but not the intensity. Also, we find that the frequency and intensity of conflict decrease positive emotions …
Foreign Policy Brief: North Korean Nuclear Weapons, Jacob Chobanian
Foreign Policy Brief: North Korean Nuclear Weapons, Jacob Chobanian
Political Science Student Papers and Posters
This paper is a brief on the current situation involving the United States and North Korea regarding the nuclear weapon controversy and possible war.
Focality And Asymmetry In Multi-Battle Contests, Subhashish M. Chowdhury, Dan Kovenock, David Rojo Arjona, Nathaniel Wilcox
Focality And Asymmetry In Multi-Battle Contests, Subhashish M. Chowdhury, Dan Kovenock, David Rojo Arjona, Nathaniel Wilcox
ESI Working Papers
This article examines behavior in two-person constant-sum Colonel Blotto games in which each player maximizes the expected total value of the battlefields won. A lottery contest success function is employed in each battlefield. Recent experimental research on such games provides only partial support for Nash equilibrium behavior. We hypothesize that the salience of battlefields affects strategic behavior (the salient target hypothesis). We present a controlled test of this hypothesis – against Nash predictions – when the sources of salience come from certain asymmetries in either battlefield values or labels (as in Schelling (1960)). In both cases, subjects over-allocate the resource …
Extremism Drives Out Moderation, Bettina Klose, Dan Kovenock
Extremism Drives Out Moderation, Bettina Klose, Dan Kovenock
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
This article examines the impact of the distribution of preferences on equilibrium behavior in conflicts modeled as all-pay auctions with identity-dependent externalities. Centrists and radicals are defined using a willingness-to-pay criterion that admits preferences more general than a simple ordering on the line. Extremism, characterized by a higher per capita expenditure by radicals than centrists, may persist and generate higher aggregate expenditure by radicals, even when they are relatively small in number. Our results demonstrate the importance of the institutions of conflict in determining the role of extremism and moderation in economic, political, and social environments.
Cognitive Systems For Revenge And Forgiveness, Michael E. Mccullough, Robert Kurzban, Benjamin A. Tabak
Cognitive Systems For Revenge And Forgiveness, Michael E. Mccullough, Robert Kurzban, Benjamin A. Tabak
ESI Publications
Minimizing the costs that others impose upon oneself and upon those in whom one has a fitness stake, such as kin and allies, is a key adaptive problem for many organisms. Our ancestors regularly faced such adaptive problems (including homicide, bodily harm, theft, mate poaching, cuckoldry, reputational damage, sexual aggression, and the infliction of these costs on one's offspring, mates, coalition partners, or friends). One solution to this problem is to impose retaliatory costs on an aggressor so that the aggressor and other observers will lower their estimates of the net benefits to be gained from exploiting the retaliator in …
Weakest-Link Attacker-Defender Games With Multiple Attack Technologies, Daniel G. Arce, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson
Weakest-Link Attacker-Defender Games With Multiple Attack Technologies, Daniel G. Arce, Dan Kovenock, Brian Roberson
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
In this article, we examine a model of terrorism that focuses on the tradeoffs facing a terrorist organization that has two qualitatively different attack modes at its disposal. The terrorist organization's objective is to successfully attack at least one target. Success for the target government is defined as defending all targets from any and all attacks. In this context, we examine how terrorist entities strategically utilize an efficient but discrete attack technology e.g., suicide attacks when a more conventional mode of attack is available, and the optimal anti-terrorism measures.
Moving Forward In Sierra Leone: Community-Based Factors For Post Conflict Development, Whitney Mcintyre Miller
Moving Forward In Sierra Leone: Community-Based Factors For Post Conflict Development, Whitney Mcintyre Miller
Education Faculty Articles and Research
War and conflict, while not manifested as economic or natural disaster, often bring the same consequences and damages and require similar capacity building. This article discusses the following four community-based factors, which contributed to the postconflict development of two communities in Sierra Leone, West Africa: (a) the inclusive involvement of community members for development and construction projects, (b) the use of culturally responsive practices in community building, (c) leadership that is directly connected with the community, and (d) the combination of traditional and local development practices with western and governmental practices. These factors were derived from an intensive five-week qualitative …
Did I Do That? Group Positioning And Asymmetry In Attributional Bias, Brian Gunia, Brice Corgnet
Did I Do That? Group Positioning And Asymmetry In Attributional Bias, Brian Gunia, Brice Corgnet
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
A laboratory experiment examined whether one structural feature of groups—members’ physical positioning—may produce asymmetry in their perceived contribution to a task. In particular, we investigated asymmetry in group members’ (often excessive) claims of credit for collective tasks ("the self-serving attributional bias"). Consistent with the availability account of this bias, group members located in the middle of a group, with easy visual access to their partners’ contributions, demonstrated less bias than outside members (who demonstrated bias consistent with prior research)—but no less satisfaction. Further analyses suggested that these results reflected bias reduction among middle members and did stem from visual availability. …