Cooperation in social and economic relations
This research line addresses the core problem of social order by studying mechanisms that facilitate trust, cooperation, and coordination. More precisely, the research line focuses on how ‘social embeddedness’ affects behaviour in social dilemmas. Embeddedness includes repeated interactions between actors involved in a social dilemma and their third-party networks. An important development during the assessment period is to go beyond the assumption that embeddedness is given and exogenous. Rather, the research line now conceives embeddedness largely as endogenous and has made progress in studying the dynamics of ties, networks, and institutions. Theoretical research within the line includes formal analytical modelling, often using game-theoretic models, as well as agent-based simulation. Empirical tests employ both experimental and field methods.