In this paper, we summarize a series of experimental studies that show that democracies don't fight each other because their leaders have very few political incentives to do so. The use of force against other democracies is perceived by the public and by leaders of democratic states as a failure...

Prior scholarly analysis of Israeli military spending has focused on national security questions. We present a mathematical model incorporating security threats as well as electoral cycles and corporate profits. The parameters are estimated empirically. The results support the idea that in...

Prior studies of the guns-versus-butter trade-off have focused on total military expenditures and sub-components of welfare spending (education, health, and housing). I extend the analysis to include the major sub-components of the defense budget. The results are consistent with Clayton's;...

The concept of policy makers' familiarity with a decision task has received considerable attention in recent years in the literature on decision making by analogy, intuitive decision making, and dynamic versus static decision making. The effect of familiarity on the decision strategy change of...

Understanding how leaders make foreign policy and national security decisions is of paramount importance for the policy community and academia. Yet on their own, neither rational nor cognitive schools of decision-making analysis offer totally convincing results, and in any case, rigorous...