Informational Effects in Conflict Escalation

๐Ÿ“… 2026-09-10
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๐Ÿค– AI Summary
็ ”็ฉถ้€š่ฟ‡ๆ”น่ฟ›ๅŒๆ–นๅฏน่‡ช่บซๅˆฉ็›Š็š„็งไบบไฟกๆฏๆฅๆ้ซ˜ๅ’Œๅนณๆฆ‚็އๅŠ้ข„ๆœŸๆ•ˆ็”จ๏ผŒ่งฃๅ†ณๅ†ฒ็ชๅ‡็บง้—ฎ้ข˜ใ€‚
๐Ÿ“ Abstract
We study a war of attrition in which each party chooses how far to escalate before conceding. If neither concedes before escalation reaches a random disaster threshold, both receive nothing; otherwise the confrontation ends peacefully. When the parties are ex-ante symmetric and their benefits are independent, improving both parties' private information about their own stakes raises both the probability of peace and each party's ex-ante equilibrium utility. The result holds for every nontrivial mean-preserving spread of posterior values---each party's expected benefit from prevailing given its private information. Higher stakes work in the opposite direction: a first-order stochastic increase in posterior values induces greater persistence, lowers the probability of peace, and can reduce both parties' ex-ante utilities. Starting from symmetry, a sufficiently small improvement in only one party's information also promotes peace; its first-order effect is exactly half that of improving both parties' information. At an asymmetric starting point, however, even a small one-sided improvement can instead lower the probability of peace.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

war of attrition
conflict escalation
private information
peace probability
equilibrium utility
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

private information
peace probability
ex-ante utility
mean-preserving spread
asymmetric information
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