Stag hunt and chicken games are canonical representations of two kinds of strategic interactions. In stag hunt, aggression feeds on itself, and mutual fear escalates into conflict. Chicken is a model of preemption and deterrence. With complete information, these games have multiple Nash...

Two decision-makers choose hawkish or dovish actions in a conflict game with incomplete information. The decision-making can be manipulated by "extremists" who send publicly observed cheap-talk messages. The power of extremists depends on the nature of the underlying conflict game. If actions...

We build a game-theoretic model where aggression can be triggered by domestic political concerns as well as the fear of being attacked. In the model, leaders of full and limited democracies risk losing power if they do not stand up to threats from abroad. In addition, the leader of a fully...

We study whether the Coase conjecture holds in a model of bargaining during conflict due to Powell and Fearon. Two players, A and B, contest a divisible resource. At any time during the conflict, they can make a binding agreement to share the resource. The conflict continues until they make an...

In many scenarios, a protagonist tries to compel a political leader (the antagonist) to cooperate. The protagonist can impose targeted measures (e.g., "smart" sanctions) that hurt the antagonist directly, and comprehensive measures (e.g., trade embargoes) aimed at provoking a popular uprising...