Uncertainty in conflicts

This paper theoretically assesses the role that uncertainty plays in the intensity of conflicts. The standard two-player rent-seeking contest model (Tullock, 1980) is extended to allow for privately known subjective values of the prize. The conflict is modeled as a Bayesian game on which each player´s valuation is drawn independently from arbitrary distributions. We find sufficient conditions for when first-order and second-order stochastic refinements in the distributions cause predictable movements in the conflict´s dissipation. We focus on arbitrary contest success functions and arbitrary independent distributions for each player, allowing us to extend our analysis beyond the case of symmetric equilibria.