A simple mechanism for resolving conflict

In Conflict Resolution situations where two parties with opposed preferences need to make a number of decisions simultaneously,we propose a simple mechanism that endows agents with a certain number of votes that can be distributed freely across issues. Its novelty, and appeal, is that it allows voters to express the intensity of their preferences in a simple manner and with no use of monetary transfers; it allows agents to trade off their voting power across issues and extract gains from differences in the intensities of their preferences. The appealing properties of such a mechanism may be negated by strategic interactions among individuals. In this paper we test its properties using controlled laboratory experiments. We observe that equilibrium play increases over time and truthful/honest play decreases over time. Subjects reach the welfare predicted by the theory. The latter result holds even when their behaviour is far from equilibrium. The fact that deviations from equilibrium do not do much damage to its welfare properties is a further argument in favour of the use of this mechanism in the real world.