Does exposure to violence affect reciprocity? Experimental evidence from the West Bank

This paper studies how reciprocity is affected by exposure to violence in early age. We combine a research design that isolates the exogenous exposure to violence with lab-in-thefield experiments to study how conditional cooperation (positive reciprocity) and vindictive behavior (negative reciprocity) in adolescents vary as a result of exposure to violence. We focus on young Palestinians in the West Bank region of the Palestinian territories. We find that Palestinian adolescents more exposed to violence are more sensitive in reciprocal interactions: violence exposure increases conditional cooperation but also retaliatory behavior. Our evidence suggests that part of the effect is explained by changes in the beliefs about other people’s behavior. 

Biography

Elisa is an Assistant Professor in the department of Political Economy at King's College London. She uses experimental methods to study how exposure to violence shapes the formation of individual preferences and beliefs and how policy interventions may influence the willingness to reconcile in contexts of protracted conflict.