TY - JOUR

T1 - Decentralized Defence of a (Directed) Network Structure

AU - Pelliccia, Marco

N1 - This is the Accepted version (Author's original manuscript) of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Defence and Peace Economics on 15.03.2019 available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10242694.2019.1587679

PY - 2020/8/17

Y1 - 2020/8/17

N2 - We model the decentralised defence choice of agents connected in a directed graphand exposed to an external threat. The network allows players to receive goodsfrom one or more producers through directed paths. Each agent is endowed witha finite and divisible defence resource that can be allocated to their own security orto that of their peers. The external threat is represented by either a random attackon one of the nodes or by an intelligent attacker who aims to maximise the flow disruption by seeking to destroy one node. We show that under certain conditionsa decentralised defence allocation is efficient when we assume the attacker to bestrategic: a centralised allocation of defence resources which minimises the flow disruption coincides with a decentralised equilibrium allocation. On the otherhand, when we assume a random attack, the decentralised allocation is likely todiverge from the central planner’s allocation.

AB - We model the decentralised defence choice of agents connected in a directed graphand exposed to an external threat. The network allows players to receive goodsfrom one or more producers through directed paths. Each agent is endowed witha finite and divisible defence resource that can be allocated to their own security orto that of their peers. The external threat is represented by either a random attackon one of the nodes or by an intelligent attacker who aims to maximise the flow disruption by seeking to destroy one node. We show that under certain conditionsa decentralised defence allocation is efficient when we assume the attacker to bestrategic: a centralised allocation of defence resources which minimises the flow disruption coincides with a decentralised equilibrium allocation. On the otherhand, when we assume a random attack, the decentralised allocation is likely todiverge from the central planner’s allocation.

KW - Networks

KW - security

KW - network defence

U2 - 10.1080/10242694.2019.1587679

DO - 10.1080/10242694.2019.1587679

M3 - Article

VL - 31

SP - 659

EP - 676

JO - Defence and Peace Economics

JF - Defence and Peace Economics

SN - 1024-2694

IS - 6

ER -