A Quantitative Bargaining Theory of War

• In Event: Formal Models of International Politics

Abstract

In this paper we quantify the effects of the distribution of power and beliefs about costs on crisis outcomes. Our empirical strategy is to structurally estimate a model of bargaining and war. The approach allows us to disentangle the technological effects of the inputs to war from the equilibrium strategies that define unobservables like effort in conflict, unobserved settlement proposals, and decision-makers' beliefs about their opponents costs of war.

Authors

• Brenton Kenkel, Vanderbilt University

• Kristopher W. Ramsay, Princeton University