Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:16:42.485Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Allocating Defensive Resources with Private Information about Vulnerability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2007

ROBERT POWELL
ROBERT POWELL
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In many resources-allocation problems, strategic adversaries move sequentially and are likely to have private information about the effectiveness of their spending. A defender, for example, often has to allocate its defensive resources before an attacker (e.g., a terrorist group) decides where to strike. Defenders are also likely to have private information about the vulnerability of the things they are trying to protect. Sequential decisions and private information about effectiveness creates a dilemma for a defender. Allocating more to a highly vulnerable site reduces the expected losses should that site be attacked but may also signal that that site is more vulnerable and thereby increase the probability of an attack. Modeling this tradeoff as a signaling game, the analysis shows that secrecy concerns generally swamp vulnerability concerns when more vulnerable sites are weakly harder to protect on the margin. The defender pools in equilibrium, that is, allocates its resources in the same way, regardless of the level of vulnerability. If more vulnerable sites are easier to protect on the margin, vulnerability concerns may swamp secrecy concerns.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 101 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 799 - 809
Copyright
© 2007 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bier Vicki, Santiago Oliveros, and Larry Samuelson. 2005. “Choosing What to Protect.” Journal of Public Economics (forthcoming). Available at: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/$\sim$ larrysam/publications.htm.Google Scholar
Blackett D. W. 1958. “Pure Strategy Solutions to Blotto Games.” Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 5: 107– 109.Google Scholar
Borel Emile. 1921[1953]. “The Theory of Play and Integral Equations with Skew Symmetric Kernels.” Econometrica 21: 97– 100.Google Scholar
Golman Russell, and Scott E. Page. 2006. “General Blotto: Games of Allocative Strategic Mismatch.” Manuscript, Center for Complex Systems, University of Michigan. Accessed November 3, 2006 at http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~spage/papers_files/blotto.pdf.Google Scholar
Groseclose Tim, and James M. Snyder. 1996. Buying Supermajorities.” American Political Science Review 90 (June): 303– 15.Google Scholar
Kvasov Dmitriy. 2007. “Contests with Limited Resources.” Journal of Economic Theory 136: 738– 48.Google Scholar
Laslier Jean-Francois, and Nathalie Picard. 2002. “Distributive Politics and Electoral Competition.” Journal of Economic Theory 103: 106– 30.Google Scholar
Luce R. Duncan, and Howard Raiffa. 1957. Games and Decisions. New York: Wiley.
Mas-Colell Andreu, Michael Whinston, and Jerry Green. 1995. Microeconomic Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morgan John, and Felix Vardy. 2007. “On the Buyability of Voting Bodies.” Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. Available at: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/rjmorgan/Buyability.pdf. Accessed on May 15, 2007.Google Scholar
Moteff John. 2006. “Critical Infrastructures: Background, Policy, and Implementation.” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.
Myerson Roger. 1993. “Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities under Alternative Electoral Systems.” American Political Science Review 87: 856– 69.Google Scholar
Powell Robert. 2006. “Defending Against Terrorist Attacks with Private Information about Vulnerability.” Manuscript, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley.
Powell Robert. 2007a. “Allocating Defensive Resources Prior to Attack.” Manuscript, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley.
Powell Robert. 2007b. “Defending Against Terrorist Attacks with Limited Resources.” American Political Science Review (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Ramey Gary. 1996. “D1 Signaling Equilibria with Mulitple Signals and a Continuum of Types.” Journal of Economic Theory 69 (May): 508– 531.Google Scholar
Roberson Brian. 2006. “The Colonel Blotto Game.” Economic Theory 29: 1– 24.Google Scholar
Shubik Martin. 1982. Game Theory in the Social Sciences, vol. 1. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Shubik Martin and Robert Weber. 1981. “Systems Defense Games.” Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 28: 281– 87.Google Scholar
Snyder James. 1989. “Election Goals and the Allocation of Campaign Resources.” Econometrica 57 (May): 637– 60.Google Scholar
Tukey John W. 1949. “A Problem of Strategy.” Econometrica 17: 73.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.