Protection and Social Order by Allen Wilhite Department of Economics and Finance University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 wilhitea@email.uah.edu draft of paper forthcoming in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations abstract Consider a simple world populated with two types of individuals, those who work and create wealth (peasants) and those who steal the property of others (bandits). With bandits about, peasants need to protect their output and can do so individually or collectively. But either way protection is costly; it consumes resources and interferes with an individual’s ability to create wealth. This study will investigate how individuals might make decisions in such circumstances, how those decisions evolve over time, and how broader societal characteristics can emerge from such decisions. Keywords: agent-based modeling, computational economics, protection, collective choice, club theory Classification codes: D71, P16, H11, D72, P13 *This research has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, ref. # SES-0112109. Thanks to Seth Wilhite whose insights were frequently sought and generously given.