Abstract
A two-stage game theoretic model is developed in which firms in two producer blocs (the United States and Western Europe) produce a homogeneous defense good and sell it to their own governments and to the rest of the world. The security levels of the two producer blocs depend on their purchase of the defense good relative to the amount purchased by the rest of the world. Countries choose their security levels, such that their welfare, which depends on their security level and on government expenditure on other goods and services, is maximized. Results show that net defense costs of the United States and Europe are lower when the number of defense firms is small and that a further increase in world prices will crowd out developing countries from the market for modern weapon systems and may force them to develop and use “cheap and dirty” weapons.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
