TITLE:
Violence amidst Virus: A Game-Theoretic Exploration of Conflict during a Pandemic
AUTHORS:
Soumyanetra Munshi
KEYWORDS:
Conflict during Pandemic Like COVID-19, Violence during Pandemic Like COVID-19, Conflict with Externalities, Hirshleifer’s Conflict Model with Externalities
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.10 No.6,
December
18,
2020
ABSTRACT: This paper explores how the COVID-19
pandemic is affecting conflicts world-wide. On one hand, confrontation would
expose both states and violent non-state groups to contamination, potentially
causing massive loss of human lives. Moreover, attacks aimed at signalling
discontent or making bigger demands, are unlikely to generate media and
diplomatic attention at the level it otherwise would have, sans the pandemic.
Hence there might be mitigation in the intensity of conflicts. On the other
hand, the capacity of the states to retaliate will, to a large extent, be
compromised, since huge financial and human resources will have to be dedicated
to fighting the widespread health and economic effects of the pandemic. Hence
the belligerent groups may have a greater incentive to launch attacks. This
paper attempts to game-theoretically study these various issues and incentives
facing the conflicting parties, under the threat of COVID-19. We consider the
simple conflict model by Hirshleifer (Hirshleifer, 1995) and augment it by
introducing possible effects that a raging pandemic might impose on the
conflicting parties. Specifically, we introduce positive and negative
externalities that a pandemic may impose on an existing conflict and explore
parametric conditions under which it is likely to aggravate or mitigate. We
find that conflicts are generally likely to lessen but may increase under
specific circumstances. We present some narrative evidence on how conflicts
seem to have ameliorated in a pandemic-stricken world.