This study evaluates the importance of accurately modeling strategic threats in complex multilateral conflict-of-interest decision problems. The objective is to improve prescriptive accuracy when cooperative n-person game theory is applied to the analysis of such problems. A competitive experiment compares the von Neumann-Morgenstern characteristic function v and Harsanyi function H in terms of descriptive accuracy. Results indicate that H is significantly more accurate than v. This suggests that strategic threats may be an important factor in modeling cooperative games.
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