IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8109.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Annexation or Conquest? The Economics of Empire Building

Author

Listed:
  • Herschel I. Grossman
  • Juan Mendoza

Abstract

This paper develops an economic theory of empire building. This theory addresses the choice among three strategies that empire builders historically have used. We call these strategies Uncoerced Annexation, Coerced Annexation, and Attempted Conquest. The theory shows how the choice among these strategies depends on such factors as the economic gains from imperial expansion, the relative effectiveness of imperial armies, the costs of projecting imperial military power, and liquidity constraints on financing imperial armies. This theory also addresses the scope of imperial ambitions. The paper uses examples from the history of the Roman, Mongol, Ottoman, and Nazi German empires to illustrate the applicability of the theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Herschel I. Grossman & Juan Mendoza, 2001. "Annexation or Conquest? The Economics of Empire Building," NBER Working Papers 8109, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8109
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8109.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antoine Pietri & Tarik Tazdait & Mehrdad Vahabi, 2013. "Empire Building and Price Competition," Post-Print hal-00832240, HAL.
    2. Adamson, Jordan, 2020. "Political institutions, resources, and war: Theory and evidence from ancient Rome," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    3. Martin C. McGuire, 2010. "Economic Analysis and International Security," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 6(2), pages 313-346, March.
    4. Martin Mcguire, 2002. "Property distribution and configurations of sovereign states: A rational economic model," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 251-270.
    5. Herschel I. Grossman, 2013. "Choosing Between Peace and War," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 14(2), pages 765-783, November.
    6. Yuri Yegorov & Dieter Grass & Magda Mirescu & Gustav Feichtinger & Franz Wirl, 2020. "Growth and Collapse of Empires: A Dynamic Optimization Model," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 186(2), pages 620-643, August.
    7. Libman, Alexander Mikhailovich, 2009. "Эндогенные Границы И Распределение Власти В Федерациях И Международных Сообществах [ENDOGENOUS BOUNDARIES AND DISTRIBUTION OF POWER In the Federation]," MPRA Paper 16473, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.