Achieving peace and building the institutions that will make it last require much time and effort on the part of adversaries. While making this effort, the likelihood of peace is uncertain and preparations for confict are on-going. We examine a setting that takes such considerations into...

In many economic environments agents make costly and irreversible investments that may enhance their respective threat payoffs but also shrink the utility possibilities set. In such settings, with variable threats and a variable utility possibilities set, it becomes possible to rank different...

To facilitate the study of contests in general equilibrium, we examine winner-take-all contests in which the prize is complemenatry to the effort of the contestants, as inputs are in production functions or final goods in utility functions. We focus on the effects of technological factors and...