The costs of conflict: A choice-theoretic, equilibrium analysis

•Conflict may never be chosen in a model with exogenously-destructive arms.•Parties self-regulate by reducing arms allocations as unit arms-destructiveness rises.•Endogenously-destructive conflict may be dominated by cooperation.

In models of (destructive) armed conflict, it is standard to account for the endogeneity of arming allocations made by incumbent government and rebel parties. Indeed, standard contest-theoretic (microeconomic) models of behavior recognize that allocations change with shifts in marginal benefit or marginal cost. Taking governments and rebels as responsive to such shifts, the present study applies standard, contest-theoretic, equilibrium analysis to the Smith et al. (2014) model of conflict and cooperation. This alternative solution methodology yields starkly different results. Within the present analysis, there does not exist greater scope for cooperation given endogenously-destructive arming rather than exogenously-destructive arming.