设计威慑信号

中文摘要 AI 辅助

国家和联盟花费大量资源发出信号以威慑对手。两种经典策略是烧钱（沉没成本）和烧桥（观众成本）。大的观众成本可以有效威慑，但可能不可行，且即使可行，相对于烧钱也可能增加战争的可能性。我们提出一种信号设计，其中防御方保留战斗或退缩的灵活性，但在了解其决心之前，事先承诺一个将已实现的决心映射到代价高昂的行动的规则。当观众成本有限时，这种设计提高了防御方的收益，同时降低了战争的可能性。我们讨论了通过法律和自动化算法的实施。我们还刻画了当观众成本从可行集中内生选择时防御方的收益，表明降低最大可行观众成本可以提高防御方收益，并将这些收益与标准烧钱设定下无承诺的收益进行比较。

英文摘要

States and alliances spend enormous resources signaling resolve to deter adversaries. Two canonical strategies are burning money (sunk costs) and burning bridges (audience costs). Large audience costs can deter effectively, but they may be infeasible and, even when feasible, can increase the likelihood of war relative to burning money. We propose a signaling design in which the defender retains the flexibility to fight or back down but commits ex ante, before learning its resolve, to a rule mapping realized resolve into costly actions. When audience costs are limited, this design raises defender payoffs while reducing the likelihood of war. We discuss implementation through laws and automated algorithms. We also characterize defender payoffs when audience costs are chosen endogenously from a feasible set, showing that lowering the maximum feasible audience cost can raise defender payoffs, and we compare these payoffs with those under the standard burning-money setting without commitment.

发表机构

• Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）
• Kelley School of Business, Indiana University（印第安纳大学凯利商学院）
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill（北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校）

机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。