Funding is requested to help Brown University host the sixth biennial meeting of an interdisciplinary group of social science researchers, mainly economists and political scientists, investigating how individuals, groups, and societies can deal successfully with social dilemmas. Social dilemmas are situations in which there is a shared group interest that would be undermined, rather than served, by each individual pursuing his or her narrower selfish interest. Understanding behavior in social dilemmas, as well as institutional solutions to these dilemmas, is of broad importance at local, national, and global levels. Such solutions can help societies address fundamental issues such as poverty and environmental sustainability, problems that that contribute to both economic and political instability. Roughly 30 / 40 scholars will participate in the meeting, of whom approximately 25 will present individual research papers for comment by the group. Participants will be a mix of senior and junior scholars with an effort to incorporate especially junior scholars who have not interacted with the group previously. Most of the participants' research involves at least two of three methodologies common in this area, namely laboratory decision-making experiments, theoretical modeling, and field studies. Funding will mainly cover travel expenses and accommodations of participants, who come from multiple U.S. regions and in a few cases from abroad.
The social dilemmas working group was first convened at Indiana University in 2003 by a group of scholars led by the late Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom, who also helped to organize the subsequent four meetings, held at Max Planck Institute, Jena, Germany in 2006, Florida State University in 2008, Rice University in 2010, and California Institute of Technology in 2013. Regular participants have included leading contributors to economic theory and experimental economics, such as Charles Plott, John Ledyard, James Cox and James Walker, and there have been numerous other participants who are well-known contributors to the field including James Andreoni, Gary Charness, Catherine Eckel, Simon Gächter, Werner Guth, and Joe Oppenheimer. Co-organizers of the 2015 conference in addition to Walker are Louis Putterman, Pedro Dal Bó, and Rick Wilson, who have also been part of the previous meetings. Our full proposal lists numerous research publications by group members in professional journals including the American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Science. It is anticipated that the interaction among participants will help lead to progress in understanding social dilemma problems that will not only lead to future scientific publications, affecting teaching in our disciplines going forward, but also contribute to the design of better policy approaches for problems of resource management and of strengthening public institutions.
