{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:47:29Z","timestamp":1760240849736,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,27]],"date-time":"2019-09-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1569542400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Games"],"abstract":"<jats:p>One of the most widely accepted explanations for why wars occur despite its Pareto-suboptimality is mutual optimism: if both sides expect to gain a lot by fighting, war becomes inevitable. The literature on mutual optimism typically assumes mutually optimistic beliefs and shows that, under such an assumption, war may occur despite its Pareto-suboptimality. In a war\u2013peace model, we show that, if players neglect the correlation between other players\u2019 actions and their types\u2014a well-established concept in economics\u2014then players\u2019 expected payoffs from war increase relative to conventional informational sophistication predictions, hence providing a microfoundation of mutual optimism.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/g10040037","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,27]],"date-time":"2019-09-27T11:14:35Z","timestamp":1569582875000},"page":"37","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["A Game-Free Microfoundation of Mutual Optimism"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"10","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6215-9629","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Marco","family":"Serena","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, Department of Public Economics, Marstallplatz 1, D-80539 M\u00fcnchen, Germany"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"135","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1540-5907.2010.00475.x","article-title":"Mutual Optimism as a Rationalist Explanation of War","volume":"55","author":"Slantchev","year":"2011","journal-title":"Am. 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