Zhaowu
50024849
Game Theory Proposal
----The Interplay between anti-smuggling
measures taken by two adjacent countries
I plan to depict a game model emphasizing the interaction between
measures taken by two countries which have a common border and face with
the problem of contraband.
Background Introduction
My game model basically would be the extension of The Interplay
Between Preemptive and Defensive Counterterrorism Measures: A Two-stage
Game.
Smuggling is always a serious problem for countries all over the world and
these years the world has confronted an increasing threat that smugglers are
more crafty and there are much more means to smug than ever before.
Obviously, smuggling is a two-way action. For example, most drugs sold
in America are from countries in South America like Mexico and Columbia, that
means smugglers transport drugs to America and bring money to drug farmers.
Thus, anti-smuggling action should be a collaborative work by both input
countries and output countries.
The primary purpose of this article is to investigate the interplay between
the measures of these two countries. The decision about how much resource
should be allocated on the border security depends on the other countries’
decision. Moreover, a nation’s anti-smuggling action is conditioned on the
losses due to the smuggling. Still with the example mentioned above about
smuggling between America and Mexico. Given that now these two countries
are facing with the same group of drug-smugglers, then intuitively we would
conclude that America should invest more on the border security than Mexico
to crack down on these criminals because America would suffer more than
Mexico from smuggling.
In this article, I want to figure out all possible factors that would affect the
collaborative action and see how they influence. Thus, we may help to find out
what is the best solution for two countries work together to against smuggling.
Zhaowu
50024849
Model Preliminaries
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons past a
point where prohibited, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an
international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.
There are various motivations to smuggle. These include the participation
in illegal trade, such as drugs, illegal immigration or emigration, tax evasion
providing contraband to a prison inmate, or the theft of the items being
smuggled. Examples of non-financial motivations include bringing banned
items past a security checkpoint (such as airline security) or the removal
of classified documents from a government or corporate office.
We assume that two nations-home(H) and foreign(F)—are involved in an
international smuggling now.
Here are some brief description of the model:
Players: Homeland (H) and Foreign Country (F)
Background: H and F are facing an international smuggling
Options: H and F can decide their own border security such as resource
allocation and whether to be preemptive or defend passively
Sequences: don’t know yet
Objectives: cost effectively to crack down the smuggling action
Information: incomplete VS incomplete
Time: Repeated
Equilibrium: To be solved
Factors that would be taken into account:
1. Cost of defensive resource per unit (different in two countries)
2. The payback of per unit defensive resource—Decrease of the possibility of
smuggling
3. The possible loss from one successful smuggling
4. The action order of two players
5. How they share the information to each other
The model above is very simple. In the real world, a country usually has to
deal with several countries adjacent. If possible, I would like to establish a
more complex and accurate model which consists of more than 2 countries.
Zhaowu
50024849
To do List
Since I have little experience related with game theory, I would first read
some related articles to get some information. And I would also try to apply
what I learn in the class to my article.
After reading The Interplay Between Preemptive and Defensive
Counterterrorism Measures: A Two-stage Game, I have some idea about my
article.
Here are 3 main steps I am going to take to accomplish my article:
1. Describe the model in mathematic language. Make sure that every possible
factors are described by variables in the formulation. Then analyze the
formulation and figure out the equilibrium, explain how we are able to get
the equilibrium and what it means.
2. Draw the conclusion about the strategy for a country to deal with smuggling
problem. For different conditions, it is supposed to have different strategies.
Explain the correspondence between the conclusion and the formula.
3. Point out the meaning of the article.
Since the model described in The Interplay Between Preemptive and
Defensive Counterterrorism Measures: A Two-stage Game is a zero-sum
game (If homeland country succeeds in reduce the possibility of being
attacked, then the foreign country would be more possible to be attacked and
vice versa) and the model described in this article is a win-win game, so I might
also do a comparison work between these two similar models to see what’s the
difference of zero-sum game and win-win game.