The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information

许多关于战争起因和行为的研究都将其视为一种讨价还价的过程。因此，一个核心难题是，为什么讨价还价会在代价高昂的战斗中失败。也就是说，战斗通常会破坏资源，因此，战斗开始后要分配的“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割，这将给每个讨价还价者带来比任何战斗后更多的东西。换句话说，争斗会导致帕累托无效率的结果。那么，为什么谈判者不能在任何战斗之前达成帕累托优越协议，从而避免战争呢？国际关系理论提供了两大类理性主义解释：信息问题和承诺问题。前者出现的原因是：(1)谈判者有私人信息，例如，他们对获胜方的回报或他们的军事能力，以及(2)谈判者有动机歪曲他们的私人信息。如果谈判者无法承诺遵守协议，并有违背协议的动机，就会出现承诺问题。最近关于战争起因的正式工作几乎完全集中在信息问题上。但是信息解释和它们背后的模型至少有两个主要的局限性。它们往往对旷日持久的冲突提供了一个糟糕的描述，而且它们还对一些案件的历史提供了一种奇怪的解读。本课题研究两种类型的承诺问题。如果权力分配发生大规模而迅速的转变，第一种情况似乎就会发生。初步的工作表明，这一机制是最近几项在美国、比较和国际政治方面的实质性不同研究的基础和统一。第二种类型的承诺问题源于这样一个事实，即国家必须花费资源来维持现状（即阻止攻击）。如果这个代价太高，各州可能更愿意战斗。这类机制似乎比信息性解释更好地解释了某些冲突的起源和延续。更广泛的价值除了对国际关系理论的发展做出贡献外，本项目还有三个更广泛的贡献。首先，申请包括一个研究生研究助理的请求。当研究人员接受NSF资助的研究助理时，他认为这是承担了教师导师的角色，并试图帮助那个人在资助期间和之后最大限度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，而不是一小群使用博弈论研究冲突的学者。在他之前的国家科学基金会项目中，研究者在《国际安全》杂志上发表了更容易获得的治疗方法。与大多数政治科学期刊相比，这本杂志面向更广泛的政策受众。最后，战争是一个非常重要的社会问题，帮助人们更好地了解战争的起因有助于社会发展。

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.