Acemoglu, Daron; Golosov, Mikhail; Tsyvinski, Aleh; … - 2011
We develop a dynamic theory of resource wars and study the conditions under which such wars can be prevented. Our focus … is on the interaction between the scarcity of resources and the incentives for war in the presence of limited commitment …. We show that a key parameter determining the incentives for war is the elasticity of demand. Our first result identifies …