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Introduction to the special issue “Experiments on conflicts and conflict resolution”

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Abstract

This special issue brings together a series of eight articles dealing with experiments on conflict and conflict resolution. The papers presented here originate from a workshop on experiments on conflict held in Rennes, France, in May 2012. The aim of the special issue is threefold: (i) investigating the main determinants of conflicts, (ii) measuring the consequences of conflicts in terms of social welfare losses, and (iii) presenting and discussing different mechanisms and institutions as well as their limitations to reduce and/or prevent conflicts. All papers included here—whether they address interpersonal, intra group or inter groups conflicts—share the same methodology, namely experimental economics.

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Notes

  1. Another potential reason for defection is the fear of being a sucker, i.e., cooperating while the other party will defect.

  2. It should be noticed however that conflicts of interest are not necessarily always bad for an organization. This may be the case for instance when conflicts rhyme with inter individual or inter group competition that provides strong incentives to innovate and to outperform (e.g. Lazear and Rosen 1981). Conflicts of interest become detrimental to an organization or a society only when such competition induces important collective welfare losses and/or when it leads the individuals (or groups) to engage in destructive and unethical activities to win the contest.

  3. This paper has already been published in a previous issue of this journal: Galeotti and Zizzo (2014), “What happens if you single out? An experiment,” Social Choice and Welfare 43 (3), p. 703–729.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers of the papers considered for this special issue. We would also like to thank Marc Fleurbaey and Vincent Merlin for comments and support. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors who are solely responsible for the analysis and conclusions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, CREM, CNRS, University of Rennes 1, 7 place Hoche, 35065, Rennes, France

    David Masclet

  2. CIRANO, Montreal, Canada

    David Masclet

  3. Department of Economics and Management, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76128, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Clemens Puppe

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  1. David Masclet
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  2. Clemens Puppe
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Correspondence to Clemens Puppe.

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Masclet, D., Puppe, C. Introduction to the special issue “Experiments on conflicts and conflict resolution”. Soc Choice Welf 45, 479–488 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-015-0925-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-015-0925-0

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