If you are looking for something to do on Friday from 10:15 to noon, head over to the Marriott Jefferson room to see my presentation on Ideology Matters: Policy Bargaining and International Conflict. It is based on a joint project with Peter Bils. Here is the abstract:
Studies of bargaining and war generally focus on two sources of incomplete information: uncertainty about the probability of victory and uncertainty about the costs of fighting. We introduce a third: ideological preferences of a spatial policy. Under these conditions, standard results from the bargaining model of war break down: peace can be inefficient and it may be impossible to avoid war. We then extend the model to allow for cheap talk pre-play communications. Whereas incentives to misrepresent normally render cheap talk irrelevant, here communication can cause peace and ensure that agreements are efficient. Moreover, peace can become more likely when the proposer becomes more uncertain about the opposing state. Our results indicate one major purpose of diplomacy during a crisis is simply to communicate preferences and that such communications can be credible.
If you can’t make it, you can download the paper here, view the slides here, or watch the presentation below:
William Spaniel 