Decentralized Defence of a (Directed) Network Structure

Marco Pelliccia

Defence and Peace Economics, 2020, vol. 31, issue 6, 659-676

Abstract: We model the decentralized defence choice of agents connected in a directed graph and exposed to an external threat. The network allows players to receive goods from one or more producers through directed paths. Each agent is endowed with a finite and divisible defence resource that can be allocated to their own security or to that of their peers. The external threat is represented by either a random attack on one of the nodes or by an intelligent attacker who aims to maximize the flow-disruption by seeking to destroy one node. We show that under certain conditions a decentralized defence allocation is efficient when we assume the attacker to be strategic: a centralized allocation of defence resources which minimizes the flow-disruption coincides with a decentralized equilibrium allocation. On the other hand, when we assume a random attack, the decentralized allocation is likely to diverge from the central planner’s allocation.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2019.1587679 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Decentralised Defence of a (Directed) Network Structure (2015)
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:31:y:2020:i:6:p:659-676

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

DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2019.1587679

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 ().