War, Peace and the Size of Countries

By A. Alesina, Enrico Spolaore. 2005

185 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper studies the relationship between international con‡ict and the size distribution of countries in a model in which both peaceful bargain-ing and non-peaceful confrontations are possible. We show how the size distribution of countries depends on the likelihood, benefits and costs of conflict and war. We also study the role of international law and show how better defined international ’property rights’ may lead to country breakup and more numerous local conflicts.

Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9f2f39b674f916293b360918c28ad22557590dd8

Citations in the corpus

• Make Trade not War (2008, unknown): “Finally, another model of war is offered by Alesina and Spolaore (2005, 2006) where wars occur because the country attacking has a first strike advantage. c© 2008 The Review of Economic Studies Limited”
• Population Size and Civil Conflict Risk: Is There A Causal Link? (2010, unknown): “The paper's findings may be specific to the Sub-Saharan region, but this does not prevent them from shedding new and relevant empirical insights on a theoretical debate of general interest related to an optimal design of the size of nations (e.g. Alesina and Spolaore, 1997, 2003, 2005, 2006).”