Self-enforcing peace agreements that preserve the status quo

Michelle Garfinkel and Constantinos Syropoulos ()

Games and Economic Behavior, 2021, vol. 130, issue C, 148-178

Abstract: On the basis of a single-period, guns-versus-butter, complete-information model in which two agents dispute control over an insecure portion of their combined output, we study the choice between a peace agreement that maintains the status quo without arming (or unarmed peace) and open conflict (or war) that is possibly destructive. With a focus on outcomes that are immune to both unilateral deviations and coalitional deviations, we find that, depending on war's destructive effects, the degree of output security and the initial distribution of resources, peace can, but need not necessarily, emerge in equilibrium. We also find that, ex ante resource transfers without commitments can improve the prospects for peace, but only when the configuration of parameters describing the degree of output security and the degree of war's destruction ensures the possibility of peace without such transfers at least for some sufficiently even initial resource distributions.

Keywords: Disputes; Output insecurity; Destructive wars; Peaceful settlement; Unarmed peace (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D30 D74 F51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825621001044
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Self-Enforcing Peace Agreements that Preserve the Status Quo (2021)
Working Paper: Self-Enforcing Peace Agreements that Preserve the Status Quo (2020)
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:eee:gamebe:v:130:y:2021:i:c:p:148-178

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2021.07.012

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().