Volume 31, Issue 1

A war consists of multiple battles, yet the theoretical literature of International Relations has given little attention to how battles relate within a war. By integrating two ultimatum games with private information played by an Aggressor and a Defender, we develop bargaining models of war with two structures: (i) parallel war, where battles occur simultaneously in two domains, as the Aggressor can access both directly; and (ii) series war, where a battle in one domain (e.g., sea) precedes a battle in another (e.g., land), as the Aggressor must first control the former domain to instigate conflict in the latter. In a theoretical comparison between parallel and series wars, we demonstrate that although series war imposes structural disadvantages on the Aggressor, series war is more likely to break out than parallel war under broad circumstances. If prewar bargaining of series war fails, the Aggressor may infer that future bargaining is also likely to fail, leading him to take a greater risk of war when issuing an ultimatum. Such dynamics are absent in parallel war. We also discuss further developments in theories of war (182 words).

This paper provides a simple dynamic model that explores the interdependence and dynamic properties of hate, violence and economic well-being. It shows that a time-dependent economic growth process that affects the evolution of hate can yield a long-run steady state, but this steady state will not be free of hate and violence. Moreover, we show that better (long-run) economic conditions do not necessarily result in lower equilibrium levels of hate and violence. We also show that, under reasonable conditions, cycles of hate and violence cannot occur. Consequently, the dynamic properties of hate and violence alone cannot result in cyclical (net) economic well-being patterns. While stable and unstable equilibria are possible, the most likely equilibrium is a saddle point. Given its nature, we can view the paper as an example of a formal model for the ideas of the “dynamical system” literature in psychology. Although the paper does not discuss policy decisions, it identifies potential instruments for policymakers to achieve better steady states and greater stability. Finally, we provide two fully nonlinear multi-dimensional numerical examples (in an appendix) to demonstrate the implications of various psychological attributes, sensitivity to economic conditions, externalities, violence and small equilibria perturbations regarding the nature of the steady state and stability of the equilibria.

This paper examines the dynamic interplay between the global geopolitical risk and eleven decentralized finance (DeFi) digital currencies during the inflationary burden caused by the Russia-Ukraine war episodes. Daily data spanning from 13 October 2021 to 29 October 2024 and the innovative Quantile-Vector Autoregressive (Q-VAR) methodology are employed for estimating the pairwise, joint and network linkages at the lower, middle and upper quantiles. High levels of geopolitical risk are more connected with bull markets of the DeFi assets and new war episodes strengthen this relation. Geopolitical tensions combined with high inflation lead to the GPR becoming major determinant of DeFi markets so contributing to the transition to the digital decentralized cashless financial system. Maker is the leading DeFi asset in this transition and constitutes a promising successor of fiat currencies that suffer from devaluation generated by conflicts.

In the preceding 11 years, Turkey has witnessed 925 terrorist incidents, resulting in the unexpected passing of 1,439 people. Concurrently, the neighbouring nations, Syria, and Iraq, have also experienced a multitude of terrorist activities. This study’s main objective is to explore how these events have affected Turkey’s exports and intra-industry trade. The investigation is centred on Turkey’s trade relationships with 71 countries, representing its primary trading partners, employing a one-way trade model. Utilizing the Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) estimator, the study spans 2012 to 2022. The findings underscore the adverse impact of domestic terrorist incidents, casualties in other countries, and the global terrorism index on Turkey’s exports. Surprisingly, the investigation finds a positive connection between Turkey’s exports and terrorist incidents in both neighbouring and non-bordering countries. Furthermore, the empirical analysis sheds light on Turkey’s engagement in intra-industry trade concerning manufacturing industry and GDP similarities. However, the scenario changes for information and communication technology (ICT) exports, revealing an inter-type of industry trade.