Optimal control and differential game models of military expenditure in less developed countries

This paper presents optimal control and differential game models of military expenditure in less developed countries. We emphasise the strategic interconnections between aggressive neighbours and explicitly stress the optimal resource allocation problem between civilian and military expenditure. A major innovation of the analysis is to analyse the asymmetric reaction functions of the two agents and the formalisation of the stylised fact that most LDC arms races have taken place between participants of ‘unequal’ size.