The Scale of Terrorist Attacks as a Signal of Resources

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6283343
AutoresPer Baltzer Overgaard (0000-0002-1967-3614, Aarhus University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1994
Volumen38
Número3
Páginas452-478
Fecha de publicación1994-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Conflict Resolution (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-0027 • E-ISSN: 1552-8766
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022002794038003005
OpenAlexW2014348226
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas44
Referencias citadas9

This article studies conflicts between terrorists and governments in a setting of asymmetric information. The government is initially uncertain about the level of resources available to a terrorist group for use in violent attacks. The conflict is modeled as a signaling game where the magnitude of terrorist attacks serves as a signal of terrorist resources. With complete information, optimal government retaliation depends nontrivially on terrorist resources. With asymmetric information, this provides terrorists with an incentive to convey the message that resources are large in an attempt to soften government retaliation. Thus equilibrium attack levels of high resource terrorist groups must be distorted upward if they are to convey any information to the government. In addition, we consider equilibria where attacks are uninformative of terrorist resources, but where the government softens its retaliation. In either case the government suffers under asymmetric information. We examine how varying the flexibility of government responses affects the likely outcome of conflicts, and this gives rise to an assessment of the value of government intelligence gathering and (partial) government commitment

Business · Computer security · Economics · Flexibility (engineering · Government (linguistics · Incentive · Information asymmetry · Microeconomics · Political science · Resource (disambiguation · Terrorism · Computer Science · Game Theory and Applications · Law · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence