Thursday 19 August 2010

New work in progress up: "Group Reciprocity"

We've got a first draft of the paper on Group Reciprocity up. I blogged about the results from the first experimental session before. The end results aren't quite so strong but are still interesting.

Experimental economists have worked a lot on reciprocity: when you harm (or help) me, I harm (help) you back. Group reciprocity adds a twist: you harm me, so I want to harm somebody else in your group. Group could be almost anything: gender, ethnicity, football team supporters ....

Group reciprocity might be an important cause of things like war, ethnic tension and racial discrimination, so it would be useful if we could study it in the lab. The paper is a first attempt to do that. I think there's still a lot more to be done.

Atlanta Race Riot 1906


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