Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization· 2026Q1
The use of armed conflict as a bargaining tool against unsophisticated opponents
- 10citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Limited armed conflicts can serve as a bargaining tool to signal relative strength to less informed opponents, influencing dispute termination even when expectations converge.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Limited conflicts can inform uninformed parties about relative strengths in a bargaining game.
- Convergence in expectations about relative strengths is insufficient to end disputes.
- Defeats can trigger 'gambles for resurrection' if conflicts are not too costly.
- Dispute termination probabilities can be non-monotonic over time.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This paper studies the role of conflict as a bargaining instrument and its impact on dispute termination. We explore an infinite-horizon bargaining game where limited conflicts reveal information about the contenders relative strength. We study the case where the uninformed party learns from battlefield outcomes but does not learn fully from diplomacy. The equilibrium of this bargaining game displays several features observed in real-world disputes. First, convergence in expectations about relative strengths is not suffcient for dispute termination. Second, defeats lead to gambles for resurrection when limited conflicts are not too costly. Finally, disputes display non-monotonic termination probabilities over time.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Management Science and Operations Research
Management Science and Operations ResearchDecision Sciences