Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-11-2018

Abstract

What determines the geographic extent of territory? We microfound and extend Boulding’s “Loss of Strength Gradient” to predict the extensive and intensive margins of conflict across space. We show how economies of scale in the production of violence and varying costs of projecting violence at a distance combine to affect the geographic distribution of conflict and territory. We test and probe the boundaries of this model in an experiment varying the fixed costs of conflict entry. As predicted, higher fixed costs increase the probability of exclusive territories; median behavior closely tracks equilibrium predictions in all treatments.

Comments

Working Paper 18-10

This article later underwent peer review and was published as:

Adamson, J., & Kimbrough, E. O. (2022). The supply side determinants of territory. Journal of Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221075006

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.