Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published January 25, 2022 | Submitted
Report Open

Bilateral Conflict: An Experimental Study of Strategic Effectiveness and Equilibrium

Abstract

Bilateral conflict involves an attacker with several alternative attack methods and a defender who can take various actions to better respond to different types of attack. These situations have wide applicability to political, legal, and economic disputes, but are particularly challenging to study empirically because the payoffs are unknown. Moreover, each party has an incentive to behave unpredictably, so theoretical predictions are stochastic. This paper reports results of an experiment where the details of the environment are tightly controlled. The results sharply contradict the Nash equilibrium predictions about how the two parties' choice frequencies change in response to the relative effectiveness of alternative attack strategies. In contrast, nonparametric quantal response equilibrium predictions match the observed treatment effects. Estimation of the experimentally controlled payoff parameters across treatments accurately recovers the true values of those parameters with the logit quantal response equilibrium model but not with the Nash equilibrium model.

Additional Information

We would like to acknowledge the thoughtful suggestions provided by Clement Bohr, helpful discussions with Michael Gibilisco, and the research assistance provided by Nicholas Anderson, Georgia Beazley, Courtney Carpenter, Jessica Ewing, Maggie Isaacson, Yilin Huang, Sophia Lochner, Madison Smither, Erica Sprott, Allison Sullivan, Elin Woolf, and Max Zilvitis. Institutional Review Board approval for this research was obtained from the University of Virginia.

Attached Files

Submitted - sswp1459.pdf

Files

sswp1459.pdf
Files (817.1 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:5b9b5ba55bc4766747bf452a59465845
817.1 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
September 15, 2023
Modified:
January 15, 2024