The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information

许多关于战争原因和战争行为的著作都把它看作是一种讨价还价的过程。因此，一个核心难题是解释为什么讨价还价在代价高昂的战斗中会破裂。也就是说，战斗通常会破坏资源，因此，在战斗开始后分配的“蛋糕”比战斗开始前要小。这意味着，通常会有更大的蛋糕的分裂，这将使每个讨价还价者比任何战斗后都更多。换句话说，争斗会导致帕累托效率低下的结果。那么，为什么讨价还价者不能在任何战斗之前达成帕累托上级协议，从而避免战争呢？国际关系理论提供了两种广泛的理性主义解释：信息问题和承诺问题。前者出现在以下情况：（1）讨价还价者拥有私人信息，例如，他们对获胜的收益或他们的军事能力，（2）讨价还价者有动机歪曲他们的私人信息。如果谈判者不能承诺贯彻一项协议，并有违背协议的动机，承诺问题就会出现。最近关于战争原因的正式工作几乎完全集中在信息问题上。但信息解释及其背后的模型至少有两个主要的局限性。它们往往对长期和旷日持久的冲突提供了拙劣的描述，它们还对某些案件的历史提供了一种奇怪的阅读。本研究探讨两种类型的承诺问题。如果权力分配发生大规模而迅速的变化，第一种情况似乎就会发生。初步工作表明，这种机制的基础和统一的几个最近和实质上不同的研究在美国，比较和国际政治。第二种类型的承诺问题是由于国家必须花费资源来维持现状（即，阻止攻击）。如果这个成本太高，国家可能更愿意战斗。这些机制似乎比信息账户更好地解释了一些冲突的起源和持续。更广泛的优点除了对国际关系理论的发展做出贡献之外，这个项目还有三个更广泛的贡献。首先，申请包括对研究生研究助理的要求。当研究人员接受NSF补助金的研究助理时，他认为这是担任教师导师的角色，并试图帮助那个人在补助金期间和之后尽可能地发展他或她的奖学金。这促进了教学、培训和学习。其次，研究者将把研究结果广泛地传达给更广泛的受众，而不是使用博弈论研究冲突的一小群学者。研究人员在他以前的NSF项目中通过在国际安全杂志上发表更容易获得的治疗方法来做到这一点。这本杂志比大多数政治科学期刊更广泛地面向政策受众。最后，战争是一个非常重要的社会问题，帮助更好地了解其原因有助于社会。

Much work on the causes and conduct of war see it as a kind of bargaining process. As such, a central puzzle is explaining why bargaining ever breaks down in costly fighting. That is, fighting typically destroys resources, and, consequently, the "pie" to be divided after the fighting has begun is smaller than it was before the fighting started. This means that there generally are divisions of the larger pie that would have given each bargainer more than it will have after any fighting. Fighting, in other words, leads to Pareto inefficient outcomes. Why, then, do the bargainers fail to reach a Pareto superior agreement prior to any fighting and thereby avoid war? International relations theory offers two broad types of rationalist explanation: informational problems and commitment problems. The former arise when (1) the bargainers have private information about, for example, their payoffs to prevailing or about their military capabilities, and (2) the bargainers have incentives to misrepresent their private information. Commitment problems arise if the bargainers are unable to commit themselves to following through on an agreement and have incentives to renege on it.Recent formal work on the causes of war has focused almost exclusively on informational problems. But informational explanations and the models underlying them have at least two major limitations. They often provide a poor account of prolonged and protracted conflict, and they also offer a bizarre reading of the history of some cases. This project investigates two types of commitment problem. The first appears to happen if there are large and rapid shifts in the distribution of power. Preliminary work indicates that this mechanism underlies and unifies several recent and substantively diverse studies in American, comparative, and international politics. The second type of commitment problem results from the fact that states must expend resources to maintain the status quo (i.e., deter an attack). If this cost is too high, states may prefer to fight.These kinds of mechanism seem to provide a better account of the origins and continuation of some conflicts than informational accounts do.Broader MeritIn addition to contributing to the development of international relations theory, this project makes three broader contributions. First, the application includes a request for a graduate student research assistant. When the researcher takes on a research assistant for an NSF grant, he views this as taking on the role of faculty mentor and of trying to help that person develop his or her scholarship to the fullest extent possible both during and after the grant. This promotes teaching, training, and learning. Second, the investigator will communicate findings broadly to a wider audience than the small group of scholars using game theory to study conflict. The investigator did this in his previous NSF project by publishing more accessible treatments in the journal International Security. This journal speaks to a wider policy audience than most political science journals do. Finally, war is a hugely important social issue, and helping to develop a better understanding of its causes contributes to society.