THE STABILITY OF ANARCHY AND BREAKDOWN OF PRODUCTION

In Hirshleifer's (1995) model for unitary actors, combined fighting/production abruptly breaks down when inter-group decisiveness of fighting is above a certain value (above one) or income requirements are not met. Accounting for the collective action problem, this article gives the opposite result that fighting/production is stable also for large decisiveness parameters (above one) and strict income requirements for each agent. The stable fighting/production equilibrium gets gradually easier to perturb off balance for high inter-group decisiveness, high costs of fighting, different fighting efficiencies, and equal group sizes. The equilibrium number of groups that can be sustained decreases in the inter-group decisiveness and increases in the cost of fighting.