Cooperation under the Shadow of Political Inequality

We study cooperation among individuals and groups facing a dynamic social dilemma in which the benefits of cooperation are divided according to political power obtained in a contest. The main theoretical and experimental results focus on the role of the incumbency advantage. Specifically, an incumbency advantage in the political contest leads to a rapid breakdown of cooperation in the social dilemma. In addition, we provide simulations based on the individual evolutionary learning model of Arifovic and Ledyard (2012) to shed light on the difference between the behavior of individuals and groups.

Keywords: Dynamic Games, Cooperation, Coordination, Contest, Experiments, Group Decision Making

JEL Classification: C73, C92, D91

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Rosokha, Yaroslav and Lyu, Xinxin and Tverskoi, Denis and Gavrilets, Sergey, Cooperation under the Shadow of Political Inequality (June 30, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4496690 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4496690