Although most disputes between groups of people are settled peacefully, sometimes disputes result in war. This lecture … have to contend, and on the permanence of the outcome of a potential war. The lecture also contrasts the possibilities for …

We develop a theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a … to go to war with each other, even after controlling for a wide set of measures of geographic distance and other factors …

the empirical evidence, showing that recent work challenges convex preference theory but is largely consistent with … rational choice theory. Guided by this understanding, we design a new, more demanding test of a central tenet of economics …, we show that sharing choices violate the contraction axiom. We advance a new theory that augments standard models with …

states are much less likely to engage each other in war or in serious disputes short of war than are members of other pairs … than is that of other country pairs only after World War II. Before 1914 and between the World Wars, there is no difference … between the war rates of members of democratic pairs of states and those of members of other pairs of states. We also find …

our theory. We show that a key parameter determining the incentives for war is the elasticity of demand. Our first result …We develop a dynamic theory of resource wars and study the conditions under which such wars can be prevented. The … interaction between the scarcity of resources and the incentives for war in the presence of limited commitment is at the center of …