Costly Interference: A Game Theoretic Analysis of Sanctions
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Catherine C Langlois
Sanctions are often described as having two strikes against them: they are costly to the sanctioner, and they take time to achieve their goal, if they succeed at all. We argue in this paper that these are instead characteristics of rational sanctioning strategies. We view the sanctioning game as a subtle mix of bargaining and war of attrition. Our formal analysis shows that equilibrium behavior involves making one's opponent indifferent between accepting an ungenerous offer and continuing the struggle, a condition we call countervailing. Countervailing behavior implies that the costs incurred by the sanctioner correlate positively with the probability that the target will acquiesce to the sender's demands, and conversely. This insight runs counter to the conventional wisdom on the impact of costs in sanctioning episodes and suggests that policy makers think differently about the success or failure of sanctions.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Research Paper
- Costly Interference: A Game Theoretic Analysis of Sanctions
- The Defense-Growth Relationship: An Economic Investigation into Post-Soviet States
- Super-Agents and the Problem of Controlling the Dynamics of Regional Arms Races
- War! What Is It Good For? A Deep Determinants Analysis of the Cost of Interstate Conflict
- External Threats and Military Intervention: The United States and the Caribbean Basin
- A Small Victorious War: Domestic Revolution and International Conflict
- Regime-Transitions in the 2003-2010 Iraq War: An Approach Based on Correlations of Daily Fatalities
- Letter
- International Relative Prices and Civil Wars in Africa: A Note
- Total Economic Consequences of Terrorist Attacks: Insights from 9/11
- Opportunity Costs and the Probability of War in an Incomplete Information Game (With Comments by Lloyd Jeff Dumas)
- A Comment on the Power Law Relation Between Frequency and Severity of Terrorist Attacks
- A Novel Explanation of the Power-Law Form of the Frequency of Severe Terrorist Events: Reply to Saperstein
- List of Referees 2010
