The Role of Noise in Alliance Formation and Collusion in Conflicts

James W. Boudreau, Shane Sanders and Nicholas Shunda ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Many real-world conflicts are to some extent determined randomly by noise. The way in which noise is modeled in contest success functions (CSFs) has has important implications both for the possibility of forming cooperative relationships as well as for the features of such relationships. In a one-shot conflict, we find that when noise is modeled as an exponential parameter in the CSF, there is a range of values for which an alliance between two parties can be beneficial, whereas that is not the case for an additive noise parameter. In an infinitely repeated conflict setting with additive noise, sustaining collusion via Nash reversion strategies is easier the more noise there is and more difficult the larger the contest's prize value, while an increase in the contest's number of players can make sustaining collusion either more or less difficult, all in marked contrast to the case of an exponential noise parameter. Which noise specification is appropriate is therefore an important consideration for modeling any conflict situation.

Keywords: Contests; conflict; alliance paradox; collusion; noise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-des and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/81533/1/MPRA_paper_81533.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The role of noise in alliance formation and collusion in conflicts (2019)
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:pra:mprapa:81533

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().