Volume 13, Issue 2

For the last few decades, security has become a major issue which threatens human well-being. We, as peace scientists, have tried to develop methods which can cope with international conflicts. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate how some methods developed in Regional Science, namely comparative cost analysis, input-output, industrial complex and others, can be used to help resolve the US-North Korea conflict.North Korea has developed nuclear weapons, which is of great concern to neighboring countries. We suggest steel industry and associated developments in North Korea supported by the neighboring countries can be a full compensation for North Korea's giving up nuclear weapons and will lead North Korea to become deeply involved in the global economy. North Korea's advantages of iron ore, coal, and cheap labor force turn out to be a $55-60 cost advantage per ton of steel over the giant steel companies in South Korea and China. Its steel and related activities could generate at least 70,000 new jobs which will be enough to boost the stagnated North Korean economy to a healthy level.

This paper reports on a technical result that we have derived from various formal models that support a prospect-theoretic account of the traditional deterrence game. The result is as follows. In sequential prospect-theoretic play of the traditional deterrence game, under both one-sided and two-sided incomplete information, Challenger's decision over whether or not to threaten Defender can be remarkably sensitive to the specification of the model's parameter values, including very small changes in the valuation of the status quo.This result supports the intuition commonly advanced in the International Relations literature: a loss averse decision maker will choose the risk averse act if the sure-thing is perceived to be acceptable, and will choose the risk preferring act if the sure-thing is perceived to be unacceptable. The foregoing intuitive explanation for a decision maker's risk-related behavior relies, in general, on only two variables: the presence of loss aversion and the valuation of the status quo. Here we show that this explanation is under-specified in that the degree of sensitivity also depends on the quality of Challenger's probability assessment and on the relative size of the value of the status quo vis-à-vis the size of the other payoffs in the game.

The bulk of research in conflict theory turns on the pivot of modern decision theory that is, in turn, concerned with an optimal decision making, which is predicated upon an ideal decision maker who is fully informed, able to compute with perfect accuracy, and hence fully rational. Conflict is difficult to comprehend in the context of optimal decision making that accords undue importance to the volition of exchange, the gains from trade and, hence, the win-win aspect of exchange. We offer for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a model of non-equilibrium conflict in a simple framework of duopoly that examines decision-makers who refrain from maximising short-run returns/profits. We posit that these decision-makers are actuated by their long-run goal of survival and growth. Based on this simple notion we first establish that there does not exist any pure strategy Nash equilibrium conflict in our model. We are able to derive the dynamics that characterises the evolution of conflicts between two decision-makers. We establish that the dynamics involving predatory activities and conflicts can exhibit chaotic behaviour. Decision makers now fail to see systematic errors. Decision makers also fail to make long-run predictions with certainty even though they act in a deterministic world. Time profiles, which start very close together, will separate exponentially.

This study investigates the relationships between subjective well-being and partisanship for people in Taiwan where voters' political ideologies are largely influenced by their positions toward their country's relations with China. It is found that voters preferring a declaration of independence for Taiwan are more likely to be supporters of Pan-Green political parties (i.e. the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU)) while individuals favoring unification with China tend to vote for Pan-Blue political parties (i.e. the Nationalist Party (KMT), the People First Party (PFP), and the New Party). Reflecting an important part of voters' psychological attachments to a political party and their perceptions of national identity, political ideology has effects on voters' satisfactions with the state of economy and the political situation. Politics has attributes to people's subjective well-being through some specific domains of satisfaction, but its effect on the level of overall happiness is insignificant. It appears that political factors have both economic and psychological effects on subjective well-being.