National defense is the hard case for the voluntary provision of public goods because without recourse to taxation it is difficult to overcome the free rider problem, much less provide defense superior to that of government provision because of the tremendous costs associated with national...

Belligerents could in principle avoid the ex post costs of conflict by revealing all private information about their violent capabilities and then calculating odds of success ex ante. Incentives to misrepresent private information for strategic gain, however, can cause miscalculations that lead...

Contrary to predictions by many experts, Ukraine’s military has been resilient in the face of the Russian government’s invasion. Drawing on the logic of polycentric defense, this paper helps explain how Ukraine has remained resistant against a conventionally more powerful adversary. We argue...