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Fight Alone or Together? The Need to Belong

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  • Changxia Ke

Abstract

This study compares contests with exogenous alliance formation under proportional sharing rules with contests among individual players in a laboratory setting. The standard equilibrium predictions are identical for all players because the proportional rule ensures the same payoff incentives for alliance and for single players (or players in individual contests). Alliance formation not only reduces the effort of alliance players but also discourages stand-alone players (especially women) from exerting substantial effort. Because over-dissipation is a wide-spread phenomenon in contest experiments, both alliance and stand-alone players benefit from alliance formation due to reduced over-dissipation. Behavioral factors such as the need to belong and the joy of winning can help reconcile the "paradox of alliance formation".

Suggested Citation

  • Changxia Ke, 2011. "Fight Alone or Together? The Need to Belong," Working Papers fight_alone_or_together, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpi:wpaper:fight_alone_or_together
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    Cited by:

    1. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    2. Sheremeta, Roman, 2018. "Experimental Research on Contests," MPRA Paper 89327, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2018. "Behavior In Group Contests: A Review Of Experimental Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 683-704, July.
    4. Vasudha Chopra & Hieu M. Nguyen & Christian A. Vossler, 2020. "Heterogeneous group contests with incomplete information," Working Papers 2020-05, University of Tennessee, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Alliance Formation; Contest and Conflict; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

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