This paper develops an economic theory of empire building. This theory addresses the choice among three strategies that empire builders historically have used. We call these strategies Uncoerced Annexation, Coerced Annexation, and Attempted Conquest. The theory yields hypotheses that relate the...

This paper formalizes the commonsensical hypothesis that resource scarcity causes people to allocate a large amount of time and effort to appropriative conflict. Our main innovation is to model explicitly the positive intertemporal effect of consumption on the probability of survival. The...

This paper develops an economic theory of empire building. This theory addresses the choice among three strategies that empire builders historically have used. We call these strategies Uncoerced Annexation, Coerced Annexation, and Attempted Conquest. The theory yields hypotheses that relate the...