Do Sunspots Cause War?
Find the working paper here.
Using a simple formal model, I argue for extrinsic uncertainty, archetypified as a sunspot, as a (quasi-)rationalist explanation for war. A sunspot is a random variable that has no effect on any of the fundamentals of the setting: not the distribution of resources, nor the countries' preferences, nor the technology of militarization, nor the technology of conflict. Nevertheless, war can transpire with sunspots and not transpire without sunspots, so that sunspots cause war in a strictly counterfactualist sense. The phenomenon works through the mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy: some of the countries think that sunspots matter, so they wind up mattering. The result obtains even when the countries are armed with objective and correct probabilities about sunspots and rational expectations about what happens within each sunspot-realized world. An empirical test confirms the result.
Using a simple formal model, I argue for extrinsic uncertainty, archetypified as a sunspot, as a (quasi-)rationalist explanation for war. A sunspot is a random variable that has no effect on any of the fundamentals of the setting: not the distribution of resources, nor the countries' preferences, nor the technology of militarization, nor the technology of conflict. Nevertheless, war can transpire with sunspots and not transpire without sunspots, so that sunspots cause war in a strictly counterfactualist sense. The phenomenon works through the mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy: some of the countries think that sunspots matter, so they wind up mattering. The result obtains even when the countries are armed with objective and correct probabilities about sunspots and rational expectations about what happens within each sunspot-realized world. An empirical test confirms the result.
Making Peace on the Cheap
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I study a class of peacemaking strategies relating the bargaining model of war to the neoclassical theory of exchange and, in so doing, develop a general equilibrium model of aid, trade, and war. In the full-blown version of the model, a third party revises states' economic and military resources, though these revisions are costly. After the adjustment, the states make a trade and determine whether to fight for the right to consume all of both commodities. I study a very general version of the model from the differentiable point of view, which provides a deeper geometric understanding of the constituent bargaining and trading models. My main result ensures the existence of a cost-minimizing pacifying aid schedule, so that peace truly can be made on the cheap.
I study a class of peacemaking strategies relating the bargaining model of war to the neoclassical theory of exchange and, in so doing, develop a general equilibrium model of aid, trade, and war. In the full-blown version of the model, a third party revises states' economic and military resources, though these revisions are costly. After the adjustment, the states make a trade and determine whether to fight for the right to consume all of both commodities. I study a very general version of the model from the differentiable point of view, which provides a deeper geometric understanding of the constituent bargaining and trading models. My main result ensures the existence of a cost-minimizing pacifying aid schedule, so that peace truly can be made on the cheap.
Civil War in the Shadow of Intervention
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I argue that expectations of third-party intervention shape the decision to start a civil war. To assess the claim, I develop a theoretical model of onset and intervention and a subsequent statistical approach built on a predictive measure of intervention. Intervention expectations improve model fit and out-of-sample performance relative to a standard model and a similar model in the literature. Not all interveners are the same: major powers, rivals, neighbors, and coethnics play unique and quantifiable roles. More interestingly, intervention expectations did not play a uniformly important role throughout the second half of the 20th Century, and the end of the Cold War appears to have brought on a new intervention-onset process. Remarkably, intervention expectations seem to explain away the well-known effect of population on the onset of violence. These results suggest that the shadow of intervention looms large in powerful but nuanced ways.
I argue that expectations of third-party intervention shape the decision to start a civil war. To assess the claim, I develop a theoretical model of onset and intervention and a subsequent statistical approach built on a predictive measure of intervention. Intervention expectations improve model fit and out-of-sample performance relative to a standard model and a similar model in the literature. Not all interveners are the same: major powers, rivals, neighbors, and coethnics play unique and quantifiable roles. More interestingly, intervention expectations did not play a uniformly important role throughout the second half of the 20th Century, and the end of the Cold War appears to have brought on a new intervention-onset process. Remarkably, intervention expectations seem to explain away the well-known effect of population on the onset of violence. These results suggest that the shadow of intervention looms large in powerful but nuanced ways.
Policy Devolution and Cooperation Dilemmas
(with David Konisky and Christopher Reenock)
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How do public good spillovers influence agent effort in an interconnected environment? We develop a model for a general class of problems in which agents share the provision of a public good and ‘downstream’ agents experience positive spillovers. We characterize endogenous agent effort as the result of the boundary quality within which agents operate, the size of their relative jurisdiction and their reward structure. We examine our findings with an empirical exercise centered on the regulation of 6,000 major water pollution sources under the U.S. Clean Water Act. We construct a novel dataset of U.S. state water pollution regional offices and use geographic information on agency jurisdictions, watershed boundaries, and elevation-induced streamflow to characterize the propensity for shirking in an agent’s local environment. Our empirical results support our expectations.
How do public good spillovers influence agent effort in an interconnected environment? We develop a model for a general class of problems in which agents share the provision of a public good and ‘downstream’ agents experience positive spillovers. We characterize endogenous agent effort as the result of the boundary quality within which agents operate, the size of their relative jurisdiction and their reward structure. We examine our findings with an empirical exercise centered on the regulation of 6,000 major water pollution sources under the U.S. Clean Water Act. We construct a novel dataset of U.S. state water pollution regional offices and use geographic information on agency jurisdictions, watershed boundaries, and elevation-induced streamflow to characterize the propensity for shirking in an agent’s local environment. Our empirical results support our expectations.
Strategic Avoidance and Rulemaking Procedures
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Informal, "notice-and-comment," rulemaking is the prototypical mechanism employed by U.S. regulators. However, agencies frequently claim their actions exempt from the process, and courts typically agree. Agencies thus face an important strategic choice between informal rulemaking and avoidance. To study this choice, we analyze a model of rulemaking with exemption, empirically analyze agency avoidance, and assess welfare implications. Our model implies that more biased agencies engage in less avoidance, as they face more skepticism from the courts and, thus, require support from group comments to have their rules upheld. Additionally, the model makes contingent predictions about the relationship between agency skill and avoidance. Empirically, we find support for our model's predictions. As for policy implications, while the exemption option's existence and use substantially impacts welfare, there are countervailing forces that condition whether we are better off with the avoidance option available.
Informal, "notice-and-comment," rulemaking is the prototypical mechanism employed by U.S. regulators. However, agencies frequently claim their actions exempt from the process, and courts typically agree. Agencies thus face an important strategic choice between informal rulemaking and avoidance. To study this choice, we analyze a model of rulemaking with exemption, empirically analyze agency avoidance, and assess welfare implications. Our model implies that more biased agencies engage in less avoidance, as they face more skepticism from the courts and, thus, require support from group comments to have their rules upheld. Additionally, the model makes contingent predictions about the relationship between agency skill and avoidance. Empirically, we find support for our model's predictions. As for policy implications, while the exemption option's existence and use substantially impacts welfare, there are countervailing forces that condition whether we are better off with the avoidance option available.