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Laboratory for Advancing Dispute Resolution Skills

From the Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law

The Pasta Wars: A Prisoner’s Dilemma Simulation

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Resources > The Pasta Wars: A Prisoner’s Dilemma Simulation

Duration: Preparation: 20 minutes; Simulation: 45 minutes: Debrief: 45 - 60 minutes

NextGen: No 

Teaching Notes: Yes

Skills: ADR | Negotiation 

Skill Levels: Basic 

Type of Resources: Simulation 

Subjects: ADR | Negotiation 

Modality: Both Online and In-Person

Participants: 8 - 24 (in groups of 4)

The Pasta Wars: A Prisoner’s Dilemma Simulation 

Noam Ebner; Yifat Winkler 

 

The PASTA WARS is a four-party negotiation/conflict simulation-game, in which participants must decide recurrently whether to adopt a cooperative stance or a competitive strategy towards one another. Participants are formed into four groups, each of which manages a flour mill that is attempting to sell its produce to a single purchaser, the local pasta restaurant, over a series of rounds. Each mill’s profitability is dependent not only on its own manufacturing strategy but also on that of the three other mills. In this way, they are subtly placed in an iterated four-way Prisoner’s Dilemma, and they must maneuver, in an environment of limited communication, to develop relationships with each other and to build trust as a means of enabling personal and joint gain.

Teaching Notes are available on SSRN (PDF)

 

Laboratory for Advancing Dispute Resolution Skills Teaching

Dispute Resolution Insitute at Mitchell Hamline School of law

875 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105-3076 | [email protected]

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