BATTLES BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND TERRORIST GROUP.

Abstract

This thesis models the interaction between the U.S. government and a terrorist group as a static Tullock contest, as well as a dynamic game. In the one-period Tullock contest, player with higher “stakes” in the game would have incentive to precommit to high effort. When terrorist group has the choice to decide “Attack” or “No Attack”, a high government’s stakes would discourage terrorist group from planning attacks. As the reward of a successful terrorist attack increases, both parties would escalate their efforts and terrorist attack is more likely to happen. In the two-period dynamic game with resource constraints, the result shows that both players would exhaust all their efforts in the period with high strategic importance. This thesis seeks to shed light on the effectiveness of U.S. government’s proactive counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East since the start of the “War on Terror”.