Guns and Butter: Stability and Robustness

Abstract

The paper considers the problem of allocating resources to economic goods and military goods (protecting property rights) in a contest model under an anarchic system which can be defined by the absence of a common superior authority to each state. I characterize the equilibrium and discuss its stability and robustness. The main finding is that if economic goods of the two states are complementary with Cobb-Douglas utility characteristics, the essential factor that affects a state's resource allocation is its own maximum military level of production out of its resource endowment. In this sense, there is a unique stable equilibrium. This equilibrium is robust with the sequence of the states' decisions insofar as the second mover's observability is imperfect even slightly.