In many instances of potential violent or non-violent conflict the future strategic positions of adversaries are very different when there is open conflict than when there is settlement. In such environments we show that, as the future becomes more important, open conflict becomes more likely...

This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support all major theoretical predictions. In the auction treatment, where winning a...

We set out a model of production and appropriation involving many players, who differ with respect to both resource endowments and productivities. We write down the model in a novel way that permits our analysis to avoid the proliferation of dimensions associated with the best response function...

This paper examines conflicts in which performance is measured by the players' success or failure in multiple component conflicts, commonly termed 'battlefields'. In multi-battlefield conflicts, behavioral linkages across battlefields depend both on the technologies of conflict within each...

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker's objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender's objective is diametrically opposed. We apply two benchmark contest...

Maintaining the security of critical infrastructure networks is vital for a modern economy. This paper examines a game-theoretic model of attack and defense of a network in which the defender’s objective is to maintain network connectivity and the attacker’s objective is to destroy a set of...

We develop a general framework to study contests, containing the well-known models of Tullock (1980) and Lazear & Rosen (1981) as special cases. The contest outcome depends on players' effort and skill, the latter being subject to symmetric uncertainty. The model is tractable, because a...

We study bribing in a sequential team contest with multiple pairwise battles. We allow for asymmetries in winning prizes and marginal costs of effort; and we characterize the conditions under which (i) a player in a team is offered a bribe by the owner of the other team and (ii) she accepts the...

We model the dynamic contest between two players as a game of tug-of-war with a Tullock contest success function (CSF). We show that (pure strategy) Markov perfect equilibrium of this game exists, and it is unique. In this equilibrium - in stark contrast to a model of tug-of-war with an all pay...

Typically, economics assumes that property rights over productive resources or goods are perfectly defined and costlessly enforced. The costs of insecurity and the resultant conflict are, however, real and often economically significant. In this paper, we examine how international trade regimes...