The focus of the Center's research is to better understand the performance of the diverse range of institutional arrangements observed around the world. The Center is home to several projects involving formal modeling, empirical research, and experiments focused on a range of questions around the Center's main research theme. The research pages are organized around collaborative areas, publications, and projects. The collaborative areas describe teaching and research activities that span investigators interests. The publications area contains publications of Center faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and students organized by topic, title, author, or publication date. Finally, the project area has short summaries of projects and participants. The Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity has five major research foci:

• Robustness of social-ecological systems: What attributes of social-ecological systems affect their robustness, and what are the mismatches between institutional arrangements and ecological dynamics?

• Innovation: How do individuals craft new institutional arrangements? And how does this relate to the past experiences of those individuals dealing with commons dilemmas?

• Cooperation: How has human cooperation evolved over time? What economic and environmental conditions encourage reciprocal, altruistic, or trusting behavior? How does cooperative behavior vary across cultures and time?

• Path dependence: How does the history of institutional change and ecological dynamics affect the future of social-ecological systems?

• Scale: How is the performance of institutions affected by dynamics at various spatial and temporal scales?