The Effects of Conflict Budget on the Intensity of Conflict: An Experimental Investigation

Kyung Baik, Subhasish Chowdhury and Abhijit Ramalingam

No 19-06, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Appalachian State University

Abstract: We experimentally investigate the effects of conflict budget on conflict intensity. We run a between-subjects Tullock contest in which we vary the contest budget from Low to Medium to High, while keeping the risk-neutral Nash equilibrium bid the same. We find a non-monotonic relationship: bids increase when the budget increases from Low to Medium, but decrease when the budget further increases from Medium to High. This can happen for players with concave utility, if a high budget has a wealth effect that reduces the marginal utility of winning resulting in lower bids. To test this, we run a Wealth treatment in which the budget remains the Medium, but contestants receive a fixed payment (as wealth) independent of the contest outcome. The bids in the Wealth treatment are lower than the Medium treatment, but are not different from the High treatment, supporting the hypothesis of a wealth effect. We then support this empirical observation by a theoretical model with risk-aversion. Key Words: Conflict; Experiment; Budget constraint; Wealth effect

JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The effects of conflict budget on the intensity of conflict: an experimental investigation (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:apl:wpaper:19-06

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