The Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Colloquium Series presents

“Identity-Based Organizations”
with Jean-Paul Carvalho, Assistant Professor of Economics, UCI

Thursday, November 20, 2014
4:00–5:00 p.m.
Social Science Plaza A, Room 2112

Identity formation is an inescapably social process entailing negative externalities and free rider problems. Identity-based organizations emerge to solve these problems. Carvalho shows that organizations at high tension with mainstream society can sustain higher levels of strictness and are more successful at identity formation. Competition moderates the strictness of organizations, but can also lead to forms of escalating extremism. Success in identity formation tends to be self-undermining leading to various types of cyclic dynamics. Carvalho applies these insights to Islamic movements in the Middle East.