Technologies of Conflict

We explore theoretical foundations and issues in the empirical estimation of conflict technologies. Such technologies are probabilistic choice functions that depend on the military capacities of adversaries, where the military capacities themselves depend on economic inputs via ordinary production functions. Different classes of functional forms can be derived stochastically or axiomatically. The additive form, in particular, (which includes both the logit and ratio functional forms) has both stochastic and axiomatic foundations. Issues in the empirical estimation that we explore include concerns with data, endogeneity, structural breaks, and model comparison.