Battlefields and Marketplaces

Halvor Mehlum and Karl Ove Moene

Development and Comp Systems from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Divided societies in the developing world experience wasteful struggles for power. We study the relationship between political stability and resources wasted in the struggle within a model of competitive power contests. The model of power contests is similar in structure to models describing oligopolistic market competition. This analogy helps us in deriving results that are new to the conflict literature. We show, for example, that the Herfindahl-Hirschman index can be interpreted as a measure of power concentration and that a peace treaty between fighting groups have a parallel in tacit collusion between firms in a market.

Keywords: Violent conflicts; Rent-seeking games; Herfindahl-Hirschman index; Oligopolistic competition. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 D23 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2002-10-08
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on latex; pages: 14
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Battlefields and Marketplaces (2003)
Journal Article: Battlefields and marketplaces (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0210001

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