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Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law: possession, property, and coordination in a Hawk–Dove Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2020

Marco Fabbri ,
Matteo Rizzolli Open the ORCID record for Matteo Rizzolli [Opens in a new window]  and
Antonello Maruotti
Marco Fabbri
Affiliation:
University Pompeu Fabra and BGSE, Barcelona, Spain
Matteo Rizzolli*
Affiliation:
LUMSA University, Rome, Italy
Antonello Maruotti
Affiliation:
LUMSA University, Rome, Italy Departiment of Mathematics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In all legal systems, possession and property are inextricably linked. Game theory captures this relationship in the Hawk–Dove game: players competing for an asset are better off when the possessor plays Hawk and the intruder plays Dove (the bourgeois strategy) so that property can emerge as a spontaneous convention. This theory has been supported by large experimental evidence with animals. This paper presents a lab experiment where possession is manipulated to study the emergence of the property convention with human subjects. We show that the highest coordination emerges when possession is achieved meritoriously and that possession induces only bourgeois coordination (never antibourgeois).

Keywords

Bourgeois strategyHawk–Doveinnate sense of propertylaborpossessionpropertystealingC91D23K11P14P26
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 267 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2020

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