8th Walter Isard Annual Award for the Best Article in Peace Economics Peace Science and Public Policy

founder of PEPS, who was widely recognized as the father of both Regional Science and Peace Science.Walter Isard has founded PEPS in 1993 with the aim to create a novel outlet for peace economists and peace scientists.In particular, PEPS was designed to attract contributions from an interdisciplinary community of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines such as economics and political science, as well as regional science, geography and mathematics.Moreover, PEPS was intended to combine both positive and normative studies alongside policy-oriented papers.Nowadays, PEPS follows not only the path defined by Walter Isard but also the advancements occurred in peace science in the latest years.Then, the 8th Walter Isard Annual Award goes to "Conflict Under Incapacitation and Revenge: A Game-Theoretic Exploration" authored by Puja Mukherjee and published in the issue 2 of the 2024 volume.This paper presents a game-theoretic analysis of revenge between combatants and its impact on the escalation or deescalation of conflicts.Using a two-period conflict game, it examines how the desire and capacity of combatants to exact revenge shape the intensity of the conflict.The analysis highlights that combatants' strategies are influenced by the value effect of revenge, self-deterrence, and incapacitation.It shows that the stronger combatant holds a strategic advantage, capable of deterring its opponent from engaging in a second period of conflict motivated by revenge.However, when combatants are of equal strength, the intensity of the conflict tends to diminish over time.The paper also draws on real-world conflicts and existing empirical research to substantiate its findings.