migration and intergroup conflict abstract two groups in conflict produce and appropriate internally generated consumable output in a two stage game assuming equal within group sharing and endogenous group sizes it is shown how agents leave groups with high productive efficiency and migrate to groups with high appropriative and defensive capabilities

production and conflict models versus rent seeking models a production and conflict p c model and a rent seeking rs model are compared for one group two groups and k groups adding a new agent enlarges the pie in the p c model but causes the fixed size pie to be allocated on one more rent seeker in the rs model the total production or rent is distributed within and between groups according to the within group and between group decisiveness productive and fighting efficiencies and group sizes play a role the collective action problem is more severe for the rs model as group size increases the ratio of within group to between group fighting increases marginally toward a constant for the p c model while it increases convexly for the rs model adding an additional agent to each of two groups is more detrimental to the utilities in rs groups than in p c groups while adding a second group of agents when there is already one group of agents gives the reverse result the severe between group fighting in the p c model for many groups causes the p c model to be preferable for few groups while the rs model is preferable for many groups applications are considered to intergroup migration inside versus outside ownership divestitures mergers and acquisitions multidivisional versus single tier firms and u form versus m form of economic organization

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

natural resources and internal conflict we present a model of conflict in which each group decides to claim the country s income and invest in arms or to accept a group neutral allocation of income and not invest in arms apart from the usual cooperative or conflictual societies their strategic choice can result in hierarchically stratified societies in which one group is dominant we show how the presence and exploitation of certain types of resources matters for the occurrence of conflict or social hierarchical stratification and for the possible effects of trust manipulation in particular we find that first robust encompassing point and lootable resource rich economies tend to be conflictual plantation economies hierarchically stratified and diversified economies cooperative second foreign intervention aimed at changing the balance of power in the case of conflict is most effective in robust and diffuse resource rich economies third trust manipulation as a means to counter conflict is most effective in subsistence and diffuse resource rich economies throughout the article we cite ample case study and econometric evidence to support our model

further discussion on linear production functions and dea abstract the purpose of the current paper is to clarify the misunderstanding in using the constant returns to scale crs model in data envelopment analysis dea to estimate returns to scale rts classification by illustrating the following two different assumptions a all decision making units dmus are assumed to be compared to a crs frontier in the ccr model i e all dmus are assumed to be capable of operating under crs and b all dmus exhibit crs several incorrect points about rts estimation raised by chang k p and guh y y 1991 european journal of operational research 52 215 223 and chang k p 1997 european journal of operational research 97 597 599 are examined it is shown that the assumption a does not mean that the rts classification cannot be estimated the crs frontier assumption cannot change the rts nature of each dmu since the ccr model mixes a technical efficiency and a scale efficiency it is possible and meaningful to use the ccr results to determine the rts classification finally the infeasibility of chang and guh s 1991 treatment of non archimedean infinitesimal is discussed

vulnerable trade the dark side of an edgeworth box abstract we examine incentives to seize and defend goods offered for trade in an edgeworth box economy appropriation possibilities generate equilibrium of coerced redistribution and voluntary trade in a reduced box potential mutual gains remain untaken because the prospect of piracy creates a price wedge wherein the effective relative price is lowered for the exporter and raised for the importer as the vulnerability of one or both goods increases the price wedge widens causing trade to diminish if vulnerability becomes sufficiently high then equilibrium with trade ceases to exist in the edgeworth box economy

a dynamic model of conflict and appropriation abstract this paper presents an extension of a static model of economic conflict analyzed by hirshleifer 1991 1995 and skaperdas 1992 to an infinite horizon differential game our aim is to highlight the strategic role of appropriation among a smaller group of agents in an intertemporal context the model yields the conclusion that there exists a unique linear nonlinear markov perfect equilibrium strategy even when strategies are defined over the entire state space we demonstrate that partial cooperation can be seen as a long run response to conflict moreover a decrease in the effectiveness of appropriation the depreciation rate of a common pool stock the rate of time preferences or an increase in the degree of noise improves the degree of partial cooperation and thus welfare in an anarchic society

insecure property and technological backwardness we consider the incentive to adopt superior technologies when private property is insecure the welfare costs of insecure property can be substantially greater than those commonly associated with diversion and with the disincentive effect induced by imperfect appropriation of returns when private property is sufficiently insecure anticipation of conflict over economic distribution gives rise to technological backwardness even though 1 superior technologies are readily available at zero cost and 2 the ex post diversion of resources might be small

endogenous destruction in conflict theory and extensions this article develops a general equilibrium model of conflict to characterize the implications of endogenous destruction for bargaining and fighting specifically we consider the scenario where two contending parties engage in bargaining to avoid fighting when there are direct costs e g arms buildups and indirect costs e g destruction to consumable resources of conflict without imposing specific functional form restrictions on conflict production and destruction technologies we show their interactions in determining an optimal decision between fighting and bargaining we find that under the shadow of conflict bargaining is costly as the contending parties always allocate more resources to arming for guarding settlement through bargaining than in the event of fighting in contrast to conventional thinking that bargaining is pareto superior over fighting we show conditions under which fighting dominates bargaining as the nash equilibrium choice the positive analysis may help explain the general causes of fighting without resorting to the assumption of incomplete information or misperceptions jel d74 h56 c7

deterrence in contests this paper explores the role of deterrence in contests as a general rule we show that for a deterrence strategy to be played by rational agents it is necessary that the contest be destructive we show for a very general class of functions that pure strategy deterrence equilibria where contestants deter one another do not exist a corollary of this finding is that under fairly general conditions agents should always be expected to engage in contests applied to international relations our results imply that war is always a potential outcome despite deterrence attempts

external threat and collective action i introduction individuals with common interests usually attempt to further their welfare by acting collectively examples of collective action include the provision of a public good or collective good the establishment of clubs and the formation of alliances or political parties in his seminal work the logic of collective action olson 1965 uses the provision of collective goods as an example to discuss collective action problem or coordination failure in particular he analyzes how group size and the distribution of individual benefits of a collective good may affect the provision level of the good two of the most celebrated propositions from his book are the suboptimality proposition the larger the group the farther it will fall short of providing an optimal amount of a collective good p 35 and the exploitation proposition there is a systematic tendency for exploitation of the great by the small p 29 these propositions have generated a broad research effort in collective action problems in economics and political science many scholars have examined the validity of these propositions 1 a limitation of olson s theory is that he analyzed collective action problems as phenomena within a single group while assuming that external threat to a group either does not exist or is treated as a constant in many cases however two or more groups compete against each other in these situations a group s provision of collective goods might be affected by the configurations of its own group and the competing groups and relative strength of the groups to illustrate assume that two alliances of states say a and b are competing for supremacy an increase in a s military spending poses a greater threat to b s security in response to the heightened threat members of b might feel the need to increase their military spending which in turn could affect the military spending decisions of members of a bruce 1990 develops a model that endogenizes external threat in a three country model with two allies and one adversary interest group lobbying is another example to understand a group s lobbying behavior scholars often focus on the number and size of firms within the group and their geographical distribution however the configuration of a competing interest group and the two groups relative strengths should also figure into an individual firm s decision concerning the appropriate contribution to its group s lobbying efforts other examples include party discipline voter turnout ledyard 1981 1984 palfrey and rosenthal 1983 electoral coalitional politics tsebelis 1990 hausken 1995a b negative campaigning in primary elections newman and niou 2000 factional rivalry in civil wars and joint ventures for research and development in industrial organizations all these examples point to the importance of external threat in explaining the logic of collective action in this article to study simultaneously the way intergroup competition and intragroup collective action interact we develop a collective good model that endogenizes external threat in the context of competition between two groups a group can be either defensive or offensive in nature we define a group as defensive if its fighting capacity can be used only to defend its own resources a group is offensive if its fighting capacity can be used to expropriate resources from its rivals as well as protect its own resources we realize that empirically it is difficult to determine whether a group is offensive or defensive but theoretically it is useful to know how the offensive or defensive nature of a group can affect the collective action problem we analyze collective action problems when 1 one of the groups is offensive whereas the other is defensive and 2 both groups are offensive respectively also in group competition if conquests are economically profitable the way spoils of victory are divided among group members can also affect collective action

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

a note on a discussion of testing dmus returns to scale by zhu and shen european journal of operational research 81 1995 590 596

on the social efficiency of conflict abstract in sharp contrast with the economic literature on conflict this paper shows that confrontation may be efficiency enhancing conditions are derived under which a contest over the exclusive control of a resource pareto dominates peaceful access

housing sales in urban beijing in the housing market new properties sometimes experience delays before they are sold such delays reflect the preferences of buyers in respect of the homes characteristics therefore it is important for managerial purposes to identify the causes of housing sales delays after analysing the delays in sales of housing in beijing city china the principal finding of this study is that delays are largely explained by the dwellings characteristics and location policy implications of the research findings particularly those related to means of reducing the delays are discussed

prosperity without conflict abstract social conflict and slow growth are features of many developing economies this paper considers the role institutions of property rights and conflict management can play in both achieving prosperity and mitigating conflict in these economies we study how introducing conflict over economic distribution into an otherwise standard model of growth can shape optimal second best taxation policy when diversionary activities cannot be taxed in this context we find that the maximization of economic efficiency may call for a reduction in growth in order to mitigate the problem of diversion even though the economy s growth is inefficiently slow in the absence of taxation this is so when institutional quality is sufficiently poor but not otherwise the paper warns against the conventional justification of growth promoting policies on efficiency grounds independently of institutions

conflict and rent seeking success functions ratio vs difference models of relative success the rent seeking competitions studied by economists fall within a much broader category of conflict interactions that also includes military combats election campaigns industrial disputes lawsuits and sibling rivalries in the rent seeking literature each party s success pi which can be interpreted either as the probability of victory or as the proportion of the prize won has usually been taken to be a function of the ratio of the respective resource commitments alternatively however pi may instead be a function of the difference between the parties commitments to the contest the contest success function csf for the difference from is a logistic curve in which as is consistent with military experience increasing returns apply up to an inflection point at equal resource commitments a crucial flaw of the traditional ratio model is that neither onesided submission nor two sided peace between the parties can ever occur as a cournot equilibrium in contrast both of these outcomes are entirely consistent with a model in which success is a function of the difference between the parties resource commitments

effective property rights conflict and growth abstract this paper shows how the interaction between conflict and growth can give rise to a nonmonotone relationship between property rights and social welfare this interaction is illustrated in a model of endogenous growth in which equilibrium diversion of resources is the cost of securing effective property rights a symmetric equilibrium allocation associated with more secure property rights and faster growth can be pareto dominated by one associated with poorer property rights and slower growth faster growth can exacerbate the problem of diversion whenever property rights are sufficiently poor these results call for caution before a society decides to pursue economic growth independently of the institutional structure of property rights furthermore if this structure is inappropriate piecemeal reform might not be in the interest of society and a substantial reform might be necessary if it is to be welfare improving

economies of scope and scale in green advocacy environmental advocacy is a large and growing activity whilst a number of economists have analysed the advocacy process no systematic attempt has been made to understand the factors influencing the organisation of the sector we explore the relationship between economies of scale and scope in advocacy under the most popular specification of a tullock type contest economies of scope arise when and only when the scale of that activity is sufficiently large the incentives for merger are socially efficient implying no need for policy intervention

sanctions and civil conflict using a formal general equilibrium framework this paper analyses how sanctions imposed on the contestants in civil conflict affect the welfare of these contestants and the allocation of resources to conflict it is shown that weak sanctions can hurt the contestant they are supposed to help while strong sanctions augment the expected welfare of their intended beneficiaries moreover sanctions are more likely to be successful if the contestant who is subject to sanctions can expect to derive a positive income in case of compliance the likelihood of success rises as this income increases

swords or plowshares a theory of the security of claims to property this paper develops a general equilibrium model of the allocation of resources among appropriative and productive activities the model emphasizes the distinction between offensive weapons which are the instruments of predation and fortifications which provide defense against predation the analysis of this model shows how the equilibrium security of claims to property is determined the analysis focuses on the possibility of a nonaggressive equilibrium in which no resources are allocated to offensive weapons and claims to property are fully secure we also analyze the complex relation between economic welfare and the security of claims to property we find for example that a relatively poor agent could be better off in an equilibrium with less secure claims to property

land inequality and conflict intensity this paper investigates the impact of land inequality on conflict intensity a fundamental distinction with the existing literature lies in the nature of inequality under consideration we investigate how land inequality across landlords only influences the intensity of the fight against a rebel group comprised of landless individuals we show that conflict intensity is non monotonic in land inequality in particular the most severe conflicts occur for intermediate land inequality levels moreover a pareto improving and thus voluntary transfer of land from the smaller to the larger landlord may exist

mutual raiding of production and the emergence of exchange joint exchange and raiding can emerge in a world of mutual raiding when the appropriated production is less valuable to the appropriator than to the defender and the defense is not too inferior to attack the amounts of resources allocated to production and raiding and the amounts of goods exchanged reciprocally are determined endogenously the model reduces to pure exchange and pure raiding as special cases pure exchange emerges when the usability of appropriation is sufficiently low pure raiding emerges if the defense is sufficiently inferior to attack the results of the model are intermediate between the results of the two extreme cases jel c6 c72 d51 d72 d74 f10 i introduction in the american civil war each side to some extent looted the other still some true reciprocal exchange between the two sides was conducted by blockade runners whereby the south exported cotton and imported manufactured goods varying across time space pure market exchange may be supplemented by or grow out of such activities as war piracy 1 corruption 2 extortion 3 crime 4 plundering or theft referred to as raiding or mutual raiding generally agents individuals groups companies nations can meet their consumption needs by exchange of goods in accordance with comparative advantage or else by attempts at confiscating the other s production resources goods or trade flows each route has been the subject of separate study this article develops a model in which the equilibrium balance between the two ways of acquiring desired goods is determined by the values of various parameters governing the productive and conflictual processes involved how can exchange conducted voluntarily and with mutual advantage emerge in a world where appropriation and defense through mutual raiding appear to be more natural means of survival 5 classical economics describes how agents exchange goods reciprocally voluntarily and nonviolently 6 political economy describes how agents appropriate and defend one productive resource without reciprocal exchange 7 a few authors attempt to integrate production exchange and appropriation 8 this article lets two agents exchange goods reciprocally and raid each other s production mutually hausken 2003 33 36 classifies the 78 possible models in the exhaustive spirit of rapoport and guyer 1966 for how one or several of the five objects production resources consumption goods exports and imports can be set under attack as is also the case for rider 1999 anderton et al 1999 and anderton 1999 this article utilizes ratio forms of the contest success function 9 reduction to a pure exchange model presented in section ii or a pure raiding model occurs by adjusting parameters also assuming raiding of production rider 1999 claims that pure exchange is impossible 10 which is correct when the production is equally valuable to the appropriator and defender rider shows that in the absence of pure exchange it could turn out and in fact it inevitably turns out that the advantages of diversified consumption achieved by mutual raiding exceeds the wastage of fighting effort if his result were universal one would not observe pure exchange in the real world which in fact we do accordingly this article shows that rider s 1999 result is not inevitable even when accepting his assumption that each agent produces only one of the two desired goods we believe that the two characteristics value of appropriation and superiority of defense over attack 11 are realistic and help explain the empirics as well as reciprocal exchange in the real world 12 regarding the first characteristic grossman and kim 1995 1279 present the following argument which is contrary to most contest models which let appropriated objects be equally valuable to the appropriator and the defender we also allow for the possibility that predation is destructive by which we mean that in any appropriative interaction the predator gains less than the prey loses

endogenous timing in general rent seeking and conflict models we examine simultaneous versus sequential choice of effort in a two player contest the timing of moves determined in a preplay stage prior to the contest subgame as well as the value of the prize is allowed to be endogenous contrary to endogenous timing models with an exogenously fixed prize the present paper finds the following 1 players may decide to choose their effort simultaneously in the subgame perfect equilibrium spe of the extended game 2 the spe does not need to be unique in particular there is no unique spe with sequential moves if the direct costs of effort are zero 3 symmetry among players does not rule out incentives for precommitment to effort locally away from the cournot nash level 4 finally there may be no correlation between win probability and strategic incentives in our framework a finding most central in the analysis of fixed prize contests

equilibrium structure in an economic model of conflict four different types of equilibrium are possible within a two player model of society where only armed self enforcement of property rights is possible the main underlying parameters are the total resource endowment and the initial distribution of this endowment between the players the parameter space is partitioned into regions in which the respective types of equilibrium occur the equilibrium types involve positive arms expenditure by respectively neither player the richer player and both players the latter case involves a sub type in which the poorer player s entire endowment is expended on arms jel d30 d72 d74