Handbook Of The Economics Of Conflict

The Handbook on the Economics of Conflict conveys how economics can contribute to the understanding of conflict in its various dimensions embracing world wars, regional conflicts, terrorism and the role of peacekeeping in conflict prevention. The economics of conflict is a relatively new branch of the discipline of economics. Conflict provides opportunities for applying game theory involving strategic behaviour, interactions and interdependence betweenadversaries. The Handbook demonstrates that conflict and its prevention is costly; it considers new dimensions such as ethnic cleansing, destructive power, terrorism, corruption, the impact of new technology, peacekeeping, the role of economists in defence ministries and the use of privatecontractors in conflict.

This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars who take an economic perspective to study peace and conflict. Some chapters are largely empirical, exploring the correlates and quantifying the costs of conflict. Others are more theoretical, examining the mechanisms that lead to war or are more conducive to peace.

Handbook in Economics series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters. Each chapter is written by an international board of authors.

Individuals, groups, and societies all experience conflict, and attempt to resolve it in numerous ways. This Handbook brings together scholars from multiple disciplines to offer perspectives on the current state and future challenges in negotiation and conflict resolution. It will serve as an aid to scholars in identifying new research topics, provide a guide to current debates, and identify complementarities between approaches taken by different disciplines and the insights which those approaches generate. Leading researchers of economics, psychology, organizational behavior, policy, and other fields have contributed chapters. The volume is organized to purposefully juxtapose contributions from different fields to enable cross-fertilization between the disciplines and to generate new and creative approaches to studying the topic. These chapters provide a lens into current scholarship, and a window into the future of the field of economic conflict resolution. The confluence of research perspectives represented will identify further synergies and advances in our understanding of this topic.

The Handbook on the Political Economy of War highlights and explores important research questions and discusses the core elements of the political economy of war.

Provides comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of the key themes and principles of conflict economics.

Conflict economics contributes to an understanding of violent conflict in two important ways. First, it applies economic analysis to diverse conflict activities such as war, arms races, and terrorism, showing how they can be understood as purposeful choices responsive to underlying incentives. Second, it treats appropriation as a fundamental economic activity, joining production and exchange as a means of wealth acquisition. Drawing on a half-century of scholarship, this book presents a primer on the key themes and principles of conflict economics. Although much work in the field is abstract, the book is made accessible to a broad audience of scholars, students and policymakers by relying on historical data, relatively simple graphs and intuitive narratives. In exploring the interdependence of economics and conflict, the book presents current perspectives of conflict economics in novel ways and offers new insights into economic aspects of violence.

Bad things occur and persist because of the presence of powerful beneficiaries. In this provocative and illuminating book, Imad Moosa illustrates the economic motivations behind the last 100 years of international conflict, citing the numerous powerful individual and corporate war profiteers that benefit from war.