The Social Benefit of War

Recent findings in economic theory show that cooperation (settlement) between two identical players with conflicting interests in a valuable and contestable resource always Pareto dominates violent dispute (war), given that cooperation is presented using a symmetric bargaining norm. Necessary conditions for settlement to arise are the destructibility of war, and the costless and exogenous enforcement of any agreement made by the two players. We show that endogenous enforcement of the agreements alters the incentives of the players to bargain. This causes a shift in the Pareto frontier so that - under certain conditions - war Pareto dominates settlement.contests, property rights, endogenous enforcement, bargaining

Piracy of Digital Products: A Contest Theoretical Approach

In the following, we examine a market of a digital consumption good with monopolistic supply. In this market, it is the ability of the consumer to bypass (”crack”) the copy-protection of the monopolist which induces a lower price of the digital good, compared to an uncontested monopoly (textbook case). We analyze the complex relationship between the cracking efforts of the consumer, the copy-protection efforts and the pricing decision of the monopolist, and the welfare of the economy. We find, for example, that the monopolist will deter piracy if the (exogenous) relative effectiveness of the consumer’s bypassing activity is low compared to the copy-protection technology. In this case welfare is lower than the welfare in the textbook case. On the contrary, welfare rises above the textbook case level if the relative effectiveness of cracking is sufficiently high

Endogenous timing game with non-monotonic reaction functions

The aim of this paper is to generalize the endogenous timing game proposed by Hamilton and Slutsky (1990) to cases where the reaction functions are non-motononic, as for instance in the literature on contest. Following the taxonomy of social dilemma provided by Eaton (2004) we consider several pos- sible situations depending on the nature of interactions (plain complementarity or plain substituability and strategic complementarity or strategic substitutability). Under the assumptions of the existence and the uniqueness of the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria, we highlight the presence of a first-mover advantage or a second-mover incentive only depending on the nature of cross-effects in players’ payoff functions and the slopes of their reaction functions at the Nash equilibrium of the static game. These properties allow us to determine rigorously the Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium (SPNE) in the ten studied situations. We establish under which conditions on the nature of interactions a leader emerges at the SPNEfirst-mover advantage, endogenous timing game, second-mover incentive, Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium

Endogenous Timing in General Rent‐Seeking and Conflict Models

This paper examines simultaneous versus sequential choice of effort in a twoplayer contest with a general contest success function. The timing of moves, determined in a pre‐play stage prior to the contest‐subgame, as well as the value of the prize is allowed to be endogenous. Contrary to endogenous timing models with an exogenously fixed prize the present paper finds the following. (1) Players may decide to choose their effort simultaneously in the subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) of the extended game, (2) the SPE does not need to be unique, (3) in particular, there is no unique SPE with sequential moves if costs of effort are exclusively endogenously determined, (4) if the unique SPE is sequential play, the win probability in the NE is in no way crucial for the determination of an endogenous leadership, (5) and symmetry among players does not rule out incentives for precommitment to effort locally away from the Nash‐Cournot levelContests, Endogenous timing, Endogenous prize

Endogenous Timing in General Rent-Seeking and Conflict Models

This paper examines simultaneous versus sequential choice of effort in a two player contest with a general contest success function. The timing of moves, determined in a pre-play stage prior to the contest-subgame, as well as the value of the prize is allowed to be endogenous. Contrary to endogenous timing models with an exogenously fixed prize the present paper finds the following. (1) Players may decide to choose their effort simultaneously in the subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) of the extended game. (2) The SPE does not need to be unique, (3) in particular, there is no unique SPE with sequential moves if costs of effort are exclusively endogenously determined. (4) If the unique SPE is sequential play, the win probability in the NE is in no way crucial for the determination of an endogenous leadership. (5) Finally, symmetry among players does not rule out incentives for precommitment to effort locally away from the Nash-Cournot level.Contests, Endogenous timing, Endogenous prize

The Social Benefit of War

Recent findings in economic theory show that cooperation (settlement) between two identical players with conflicting interests in a valuable and contestable resource always Pareto dominates violent dispute (war), given that cooperation is presented using a symmetric bargaining norm. Necessary conditions for settlement to arise are the destructibility of war, and the costless and exogenous enforcement of any agreement made by the two players. We show that endogenous enforcement of the agreements alters the incentives of the players to bargain. This causes a shift in the Pareto frontier so that - under certain conditions - war Pareto dominates settlement

Enforcement of Property Rights in a Barter Economy

If property rights to consumption goods are insecure, the incentives to trade in a barter economy are reshaped. In a pure exchange economy, we examine the case where two contestable consumption goods are vital to two agents and initial endowments follow a binary distribution. In line with the existing literature, we examine in a two-stage game how the equilibrium security of claims to property is determined. We find that, in equilibrium, two different regimes emerge, depending on the exogenous preference and appropriationeffectiveness parameters: Peaceful coexistence and trade and appropriation,with the former regime strictly Pareto-dominating the latter regime

The Social Benefit of War

Recent findings in economic theory show that cooperation (settlement) between two identical players with conflicting interests in a valuable and contestable resource always Pareto dominates violent dispute (war), given that cooperation is presented using a symmetric bargaining norm. Necessary conditions for settlement to arise are the destructibility of war, and the costless and exogenous enforcement of any agreement made by the two players. We show that endogenous enforcement of the agreements alters the incentives of the players to bargain. This causes a shift in the Pareto frontier so that - under certain conditions - war Pareto dominates settlement

In vitro characterization of engineered red blood cells as viral traps against HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2

Engineered red blood cells (RBCs) expressing viral receptors could be used therapeutically as viral traps, as RBCs lack nuclei and other organelles required for viral replication. However, expression of viral receptors on RBCs is difficult to achieve since mature erythrocytes lack the cellular machinery to synthesize proteins. Herein, we show that the combination of a powerful erythroid-specific expression system and transgene codon optimization yields high expression levels of the HIV-1 receptors CD4 and CCR5, as well as a CD4-glycophorin A (CD4-GpA) fusion protein in erythroid progenitor cells, which efficiently differentiated into enucleated RBCs. HIV-1 efficiently entered RBCs that co-expressed CD4 and CCR5, but viral entry was not required for neutralization, as CD4 or CD4-GpA expression in the absence of CCR5 was sufficient to potently neutralize HIV-1 and prevent infection of CD4+ T cells in vitro due to the formation of high-avidity interactions with trimeric HIV-1 Env spikes on virions. To facilitate continuous large-scale production of RBC viral traps, we generated erythroblast cell lines stably expressing CD4-GpA or ACE2-GpA fusion proteins, which produced potent RBC viral traps against HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. Our in vitro results suggest that this approach warrants further investigation as a potential treatment against acute and chronic viral infections