Contest Success Functions: Theory and Evidence

Sung-Ha Hwang

UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers from University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics

Abstract: Contest success functions, which show how probabilities of win- ning depend on resources devoted to a conflict, have been widely used in the literature addressing appropriative activities (economics), international and civil wars (political science), and group con?ict and selection (evolutionary biology). Two well-known forms of contest success functions predict contest outcomes from the difference between the resources of each side and from the ratio of resources. The analytical properties of a given conflict model, such as the existence of equilibrium, can be drastically changed simply by altering the form of the contest success function. Despite this problem, there is no consensus about which form is analytically better or empirically more plausi- ble. In this paper we propose an integrated form of contest success functions, which has the ratio form and the difference form as limiting cases, and study the analytical properties of this function. We also estimate different contest success functions to see which form is more empirically probable, using data from battles fought in seventeenth-century Europe and during World War II. JEL Categories: C70, D72, D74

Keywords: Conflicts; Contest Success Functions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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