Arms Spending and War Casualties: Understanding the Strategic Trade-Offs in Warfare

Kerim Keskin

Defence and Peace Economics, 2025, vol. 36, issue 7, 960-974

Abstract: This paper formulates an armed conflict as a game-theoretic model, and relying on the empirical evidence that war casualties are costly for governments due to loss of public support, it investigates the strategic trade-off between arms spending and casualty costs. By characterizing the unique Nash equilibrium in our conflict model, we offer insights into how each side acts in equilibrium when one side’s war efforts are more destructive, or its citizens are more sensitive to casualties, or both. Emphasizing the pivotal role of public sentiment in shaping government actions during armed conflicts, our results reveal how disadvantageous it can be to incur relatively higher costs from war casualties in terms of winning probabilities in equilibrium.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2024.2420992

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