Collective action and the common enemy effect

Kris De Jaegher and Britta Hoyer

Defence and Peace Economics, 2016, vol. 27, issue 5, 644-664

Abstract: How is collective defence by players affected when they face a threat from an intelligent attacker rather than a natural threat? This paper analyses this question using a game-theoretic model. Facing an intelligent attacker has an effect if players move first and visibly set their defence strategies, thereby exposing any players who do not defend, and if the attacker is, moreover, not able to commit to a random attack. Depending on the parameters of the game, the presence of an intelligent attacker either increases the probability that players jointly defend (where such joint defence either does or does not constitute a utilitarian optimum), or decreases the probability that players jointly defend (even though joint defence is a utilitarian optimum).

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2014.925676 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:defpea:v:27:y:2016:i:5:p:644-664

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GDPE20

DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2014.925676

Access Statistics for this article

Defence and Peace Economics is currently edited by Professor Keith Hartley

More articles in Defence and Peace Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().