Keynote speakers > Kai A. Konrad

Kai A. Konrad is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich. He was a chaired Professor of Economics at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1994 to 2009. Concurrently he was Adjunct Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway, from 1994 to 2000, and a Director at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) from 2001 to 2009. He was won several prizes, including the Duncan Black Prize and the Gossen Prize, and is member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of several other science academies. Kai is currently a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, previously managing editor of Economic Policy and on the editorial boards of several other international journals in Economics and Political Science. His scientific interest focuses on understanding the functioning of the state and other private or public communities. He has published more than 80 papers in international journals, including the most prestigious ones, in Economics but also Political Sciences, Law, and Management. Since 1999 he is a member of the Council of Scientific Advisors to the Federal Ministry of Finance and was the chairperson from 2011-2014. Before turning to economics, Kai tried physics for its ambition to explain the universe... but accidentally found out that the explanatory power of Economics was more attractive.

Monday, June 13, 2016 - 11:40 am

"Brothers in Arms - Theory and Experimental Evidence on Alliances"

Abstract: If several players compete in a contest  for a prize, some players may form an alliance and fight jointly against the non-members of this alliances. “Brothers in Arms – Theory and Experimental Evidence on Alliances" provides a survey of three stragic implications of the formation of alliance for the players’ performance. These implications make the formation of an alliance less attractive from the point of view of their members. The presentation also discusses a large set of positive reasons for the formation of alliances that have been analyzed in the literature. These considerations lead to a number of questions about free-riding among alliance members. Is this problem augmented if the alliance members fight an internal conflict about the distribution of what they earn in fighting with others? How strong is the distributional conflict between former members of an alliance? Do such former “brothers in arms” fight against each other, similar to players without such a joint fighting history? How important are the rules that govern the process of alliance formation for possible ingroup-favoritism inside the alliance? And if alliances are formed voluntarily, who among the players would like to enter into an alliance, and who would prefer to stand alone? These questions have been addressed in a number of laboratory experiments and surveyed in the presentation.

credit photo: David Ausserhofer