The Dark Side of the Force

The volume shows how economic analysis can explain the causes, conduct, and consequences of conflict.

Introduction; 1. The dark side of the force; Part I. Causes, Consequences and Conduct of Conflict: 2. The bioeconomic causes of war; 3. The paradox of power; 4. Do the rich get richer and the poor poorer? Experimental tests of a model of power; 5. Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: ration vs. difference models of relative success; 6. Anarchy and its breakdown; 7. Truth, effort, and the legal battle; 8. Are equilibrium strategies unaffected by incentives?; Part II. Evolutionary Approaches to Conflict and its Resolution: 9. Extract from evolutionary models in economics and law: cooperation versus conflict strategies; 10. On the emotions as guarantors of threats and promises; 11. What strategies can support the evolutionary emergence of cooperation?; 12. Selection, mutation, and the preservation of diversity in evolutionary games; 13. There are many evolutionary pathways to cooperation; 14. The expanding domain of economics.