Super-Agents and the Problem of Controlling the Dynamics of Regional Arms Races

Coram Alex (abtcoram@cyllene.uwa.edu.au) and Noakes Lyle (lyle@maths.uwa.edu.au)
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Coram Alex: University of Western Australia
Noakes Lyle: University of Western Australia
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Raul Caruso (raul.caruso@unicatt.it)

Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2010, vol. 16, issue 1, 42

Abstract: Sometimes a large agent, called a super-agent, wishes to control the arms expenditures of regional powers over time, but this type of situation is difficult to analyze if the smaller agents are interacting with others. This paper attempts to overcome some of these difficulties and to provide general results that will be useful for comparison with models of more particular cases. It does this by extending the well known Richardson approach to dynamic arms races in new directions. It also produces some counterintuitive results. Among these is that the optimal programme for the super-agent may be to accelerate the expenditure of agents whose final expenditure it wishes to reduce. This has implications for large power policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Keywords: arms races; Richardson model; dynamics; economic modeling; optimal control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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DOI: 10.2202/1554-8597.1190

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