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Pointing out the remarkable levels of hostile interaction in the air space over contested territory between states like China and Japan or Greece and Turkey we argue that air space incursions can be interpreted as a rational strategy with ultimately political aims. In our interpretation deliberate intrusions of military aircraft into sensitive air space serve as an indirect risk-generating mechanism, as they will trigger scrambles of the opposed government's air force which may escalate into a military crisis. We derive testable hypotheses from a game-theoretic model, which we developed in earlier work to explore the strategic logic behind this risk-generating mechanism more rigorously. In order to test whether the model's predictions regarding the effect of short-term economic developments on the states' interaction hold, we built a database of daily event observations from the Hellenic National Defence General Staff reports of the last 4 years, containing time series data of Turkish intrusions into Greek-claimed air space and the number of dogfights between Greek and Turkish fighter planes. What we find is that not only Greek engagements of Turkish intruders but also massed, provocative Turkish intrusions have become significantly less likely after the onset of the Greek economic crisis. These findings are well in line with the predictions of the model and thus supportive of our theory.
Ausgehend von einer ausführlichen Darstellung der Entwicklungslinien des Völkerrechts analysiert Sören C. Schwuchow die Entstehung von Jurisdiktionskonflikten im internationalen Luftraum vor dem Hintergrund rechtlicher Rahmenbedingungen sowie der strategischen Interessen der Staaten. Grundlage ist die Annahme, dass manche Regierungen „Kanonenbootdiplomatie“ im Luftraum betreiben, indem sie über umstrittenen Territorien gezielt Abfangmanöver provozieren, um die eigene Konfliktbereitschaft zu signalisieren. Der Autor analysiert modelltheoretisch die strategische Interdependenz der Staaten und überprüft sie empirisch. Er liefert so einen Beitrag zum besseren Verständnis der Bestimmungsgründe staatlicher Außenpolitik sowie der Ausgestaltung des Völkerrechts.
Greece and its creditors concluded negotiations over a third bailout by signing a Memorandum of Understanding on 19 August 2015. The dominant view among most economic policy analysts and commentators seems to be that the actions of the Greek government in the months before the deal had been erratic and lacked coordination. In this paper we argue instead that the decisions of the Greek leaders, including asking the voters to reject the earlier terms demanded by the creditors in a referendum, can be rationally explained by the logic of brinkmanship. We develop a game-theoretic model to show that the actions of the Greek government are consistent with a strategy aimed at getting a better bailout deal.
In this note, we outline a general framework for analyzing how inequality and military spending interact in a society governed by a rent-seeking autocrat. Relying on a general equilibrium model, we show that, generally, the autocrat utilizes the military for redistribution in favor of poorer citizens. However, the dictator’s own rent-seeking activity weakens the extent of redistribution and, in the extreme, can even reverse its direction, yielding more unequal secondary distributions instead. Accordingly, the initial level of inequality also affects the impact of military spending on inequality as the former has an impact on the extent of both, the regime’s rent-seeking activity as well as redistribution. Here, our model shows that primary and secondary distributions are rather equal for extreme initial equality/inequality. For medium levels of initial inequality, redistribution is rather large and can be in favor of the poor or of the rich, depending on the extent of rent-seeking and the primary distribution. Based on these results, we highlight the importance of a society’s institutional framework for analyzing the relation of inequality and military spending.
Wir analysieren die Nationale Industriestrategie 2030, die im Februar 2019 vom Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie veröffentlicht wurde. Bei dieser Strategie handelt es sich um einen Versuch, vertikale Industriepolitik in Deutschland zu stärken. Wir argumentieren, dass die theoretische und empirische Rechtfertigung für diese Strategie insgesamt schwach ist. Die vom Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) vorgeschlagenen Instrumente weisen meist nur eine sehr geringe Passgenauigkeit zur mittelständisch geprägten deutschen Unternehmenslandschaft auf. Sie stellen Anforderungen an die Fähigkeiten der staatlichen Entscheidungsträger, die in der Realität kaum vorzufinden sind. Eine sinnvolle Alternative würde in einer Rückbesinnung auf ordnungspolitische Prinzipien, insbesondere die Gewährleistung einer hohen Wettbewerbsintensität, bestehen.
We study a model that establishes a novel theoretical rationale for the empirically well-documented relation between inequality and corruption. According to our model, inequality can nurture corruption by empowering organized crime because collusion between local police forces and criminal organizations is more likely in societies characterized by high inequality or weak security forces. Law enforcement and organized crime have a strong incentive to collude due to efficiency gains from specialization. However, their agreement breaks down when the mobsters can no longer credibly commit to joint rent maximization and thus start to compete with law enforcement for citizens’ wealth. The mobsters then non-violently monopolize the market for extortion by undercutting the police forces, similar to a strategy of predatory pricing. Criminal collusion is thus not very different from its corporate equivalent; hence, similar policy measures should be promising. In addition, our model also suggests that the criminal organization’s higher efficiency in extracting rents has a greater impact when the relative power between law enforcement and organized crime is rather balanced. Accordingly, when violent conflict becomes less predictable, non-violent elements of relative power become more relevant. Our model also allows for the interpretation that in the absence of strong social norms against corruption, organized crime is more difficult to challenge.
In 594 BCE, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, called upon to resolve a deepening social crisis, introduced a new constitution and mandated that in civil conflicts, no citizen is to remain apathetic and must take sides. Because the law seemed to support strife, it presents a puzzle. The paper offers a political economy rationale for Solon’s law against neutrality, modeling social conflict as a rent-seeking competition. We divide society into three groups, a hereditary aristocracy, which monopolized power before the Solonian constitution, a rival wealth-based commercial elite, called the new Solonian elite, and the poor, who are enfranchised only partly. We then identify the conditions under which the third group is better off by allying with one of the other groups, protecting the Solonian constitution. In our framework, Solon’s ban on neutrality is an attempt to change the payoffs from violent redistributions of rents, so that conflict is avoided. Accordingly, the ban should not only impede excessive rent seeking, but also prevent the exclusion of any social group.