This paper studies how the technology of military conflict affects the allocation of resources in military spending (“guns”) and productive investment (“butter”). We first identify the fundamental property of conflict technology which the two commonly used contest success functions, the...

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other...