A natural approach to understanding the tendencies of nations to enter or avoid wars is through the study of national decision making in international crises. Recent game-theoretic models of national crisis behavior can be used to generate research hypotheses about how specific features of...

This report uses a generic two-stage escalation model to ask whether and when limited conflicts can occur. There are two players in the model: Challenger and Defender. Challenger can either initiate a conflict or not. If Challenger initiates, Defender can concede, respond-in-kind, or escalate....

A generic asymmetric two-stage escalation model of incomplete information is used to examine strategic relationships in which one player adopts a defense posture akin to the “Massive Retaliation†policy of the Eisenhower administration that relies only on the threat of escalation to...

The compensation received by economic agents reflects their performance. Usually compensation reflects performance measured cardinally, but sometimes ordinal considerations play a role. It is well established that rewards — cardinal or ordinal — can rationally motivate contestants to put...

Power sharing is modeled as a duel over some prize. Each of two players may either share the prize in some ratio or fire at the other player—either in sequence or simultaneously—and eliminate it with a specified probability. If one player eliminates the other without being eliminated itself,...