A Macrodynamic Model of War: Addressing Kant’s Democratic Peace Proposition
Abstract
Abstract War and political regime are fundamentally linked. From Athen’s democratic empire in the 5th Century BCE, through the industrialization of war in the 19th and 20th centuries to today’s nuclear powers, all forms of political regimes have been involved in war. Very few macroeconomic models have accounted for the costs and benefits of war. We develop a macrodynamic model of war in order to address Kant’s notion of democratic perpetual peace. We enrich macroeconomics by introducing regime-specific sensitivity to human loss, which affects the desirability of war. Our model, based on a dynamics à la Solow, can account for multiple wars throughout history.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton
Defense
Military
and Policy Studies
War
Ethics
and Justification
Publication details
- Journal / source
- The B E Journal of Macroeconomics
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 121–162
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN