IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/shf/wpaper/2024003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Attack-and-Defense Conflict with the Gun-and- Butter Dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Subhasish M. Chowdhury

    (Department of Economics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DT, UK)

  • Iryna Topolyan

    (Department of Economics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA)

Abstract

We analyze a general equilibrium model of attack and defense with production and conflict. One attacker and one defender allocate their fixed endowments either to produce gun or to produce butter, and the volume of guns produced determines the winner in the conflict. If the attacker wins, then it appropriates all the butter produced in the economy; otherwise, each consume only their own butter. We characterize the unique interior and unique corner equilibrium for this game. We find that (i) the defender may spend more resources on conflict than the attacker even without loss aversion or other behavioral biases, (ii) the attacker may expend all their resources only in conflict, and (iii) the interior and the corner equilibria cannot coexist.

Suggested Citation

  • Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Iryna Topolyan, 2024. "The Attack-and-Defense Conflict with the Gun-and- Butter Dilemma," Working Papers 2024003, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:shf:wpaper:2024003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/serps
    File Function: First version, June 2024
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Conflict; Production; Gun and Butter; Attack and Defense;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • Q34 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:shf:wpaper:2024003. 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: Mike Crabtree (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desheuk.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.