Managing asymmetric conflict

John Dunne, Maria Garcia-Alonso, Paul Levine () and Ronald Smith

Oxford Economic Papers, 2006, vol. 58, issue 2, 183-208

Abstract: This paper considers a simple model of asymmetric conflict, between an incumbent, e.g. government or dominant firm, and potential challengers, e.g. guerrillas or entrants. It is not uncommon for challengers to win such conflicts despite their lack of resources. One way they can do this by exploiting a second mover advantage: choosing to attack the incumbent in ways that it had not prepared for, because it was locked in by past investments. To model such asymmetric conflict we use a three stage game. In the first stage the incumbent chooses effort; in the second stage the challengers choose the degree of differentiation from the incumbent and in the third stage each decide whether to attack or defend and collect their payoffs. Although the game is simple, the calculations required from the players are difficult and shed light on the complexities of many conflicts. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpi056 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Managing Asymmetric Conflict (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:58:y:2006:i:2:p:183-208

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal

More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().