The attack‐and‐defense conflict with the gun‐and‐butter dilemma

Subhasish Chowdhury and Iryna Topolyan

Economic Inquiry, 2026, vol. 64, issue 1, 245-260

Abstract: We analyze a general equilibrium model of attack and defense with production. One attacker and one defender allocate fixed endowments between producing butter and guns. We characterize the unique interior and unique corner equilibrium, and find that (i) the defenders may spend more resources on conflict than the attacker even without loss aversion or other preferential bias, (ii) the attackers may expend all their resources only in conflict, and (iii) the interior and the corner equilibria cannot coexist. These results may help explain Ukraine's sustained high defense effort and Russia's militarized economy, or the excessive conflict expenditure by Hamas etc.

Date: 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.70020

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Working Paper: The Attack-and-Defense Conflict with the Gun-and- Butter Dilemma (2024)
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