Preface

In their May 2019 preview of the best war movies available on Netflix, the editors of Esquire state that:

[f]rom gritty thrillers that examine the psychological effects war has on humanity, to action-packed spectacles that boast heroic figures, to romances set against the conflicts of battle, Hollywood has often used war-ravaged settings to tell some of cinema’s best stories.¹

We agree with this sentiment and would add that through these stories Hollywood also provides, whether inadvertently or purposefully, its customers with numerous examples of how economics principles often play an important role in military conflict. The authors of the essays included in this book illustrate the economics lessons portrayed in Hollywood’s adaptations of military conflicts such as Band of Brothers, Conspiracy, The Dirty Dozen, Dunkirk, Memphis Belle, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Spartacus, Stalag 17 and Valkyrie. The motion pictures among this list grossed more than $1.7 billion at the box office (worldwide), a figure that would be much higher if adjusted for inflation in order to account for their age. Thus, the economic lessons gleaned from each, some of which are previewed below, come from an important slice of popular culture in America and abroad.

In the first chapter, Carlos J. Asarta, Zachary Ferrara and Franklin G. Mixon, Jr. provide a review of the academic literature on war movies and economics. They discuss prior research on how game-theoretic concepts such as strategic behavior, asymmetric information and signaling are, as portrayed in Schindler’s List, used by Oskar Schindler to save 1,100 Jewish workers from the Nazi Holocaust. This same prior research also discusses how the important economic concepts of reservation prices, consumer surplus, producer surplus, profit maximization and rent-seeking are portrayed in Schindler’s List. Next, Asarta et al. also describe how the films Conspiracy, a dialogue-driven piece about the 1942 Wannsee Conference, and Valkyrie, a movie about the July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, encompass several of the concepts that constitute the modern theory of bureaucracy developed in the early 1980s by economists Albert Breton and Ronald Wintrobe.

The chapter by Joshua C. Hall and Daniel Bonneau illustrates how several of the core concepts of economics are present in the movie Stalag 17. The prisoners of war depicted in the movie use cigarettes as commodity money, allowing Hall and Bonneau to discuss how this choice by the POWs relates to the characteristics of money, including as a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. Of course, all of the intra-camp trading that occurs during the movie illustrates, as Hall and Bonneau explain, how preferences, scarcity, opportunity costs and property rights are important features or elements of a market economy, which developed in the POW camp depicted in Stalag 17.

In the third chapter, Asarta and Mixon illustrate how the Afghan tribal code known as Pashtunwali, which guarantees the safety of a traveler who is in need of protection by a village, worked as a commitment device that ultimately saved the life of Marcus Luttrell, the sole surviving member of a four-man U.S. Navy Seal team that conducted a covert mission during Operation Enduring Freedom, the name given to the U.S. war in Afghanistan (2001–present). As Asarta and Mixon point out, the ill-fated military mission, which is portrayed in Lone Survivor, offers the context for a straightforward type of coordination game where the players want to avoid, not choose, actions with the same labels, such as the traditional game of chicken played by American teenagers during the 1950s. As they also conclude, adherence to the Pashtun code of Pashtunwali restricted the villagers’ freedom to act in a self-interested manner, which meant not protecting Luttrell from his Taliban pursuers, by altering their payoffs by an amount equal to their loss of reputation among the larger Pashtun community. This commitment saved Luttrell’s life.

Next, Diego Méndez-Carbajo explores examples of the now well-known ultimatum game captured in the movie The Dirty Dozen. In one example, the game illustrates a strictly rational, analytical strategy where, in assembling a small commando unit made up of convicts facing the death penalty, each convict receives the following ultimatum: join the daredevil outfit or serve your death sentence. As suicidal as the mission assigned to the outfit may be, self-preservation dominates: a chance to live is superior to certain death. Thus, as Méndez-Carbajo explains, the offer is accepted. The second example touches on behavioral theory strategies where, in testing the candidates’ commitment to the secrecy of their mission, an Army commander orders the convicts to each speak publicly about their mission or suffer the prescribed consequences to an act of insubordination. As in the prior example, self-preservation dominates: talking will expose the secret mission, canceling it and sending the convicts back to the gallows. In this case, everybody keeps quiet, meaning the responders choose a game strategy where the proposer’s payoff is lower, even if that requires lowering each responder’s own payoff as well.

Laura J. Ahlstrom and Mixon provide a discussion of how the Third Servile War (73 BC–71 BC), pitting several legions of the Roman Republic led by Marcus Licinius Crassus against escaped slaves led by Spartacus, provides a unique example, as depicted in the television movie series Spartacus, of two private armies fighting a war over the survival of the Roman Republic. As depicted in the series, Crassus, widely known to be the richest man in Rome, receives a request from the Roman Senate to raise an army to oppose Spartacus. In responding positively to this request, Crassus accepts an offer of 120 denarii for fully equipping each soldier. As Ahlstrom and Mixon point out, outfitting each soldier in Crassus’ private army with a sword, helmet, shield, armor and footwear would have cost him somewhere between $126 million and $168 million in modern-day terms. On the other hand, lacking production capacity meant that pillage and plunder was likely the sole option available to Spartacus for providing for his private rebel army. This issue is partially addressed in Spartacus when the rebel army defeats a Roman militia, a result that leads to the capture of many Roman swords and shields. As Ahlstrom and Mixon conclude, the private armies led by Roman politician and businessman Marcus Licinius Crassus and gladiator champion and escaped slave Spartacus both proved to be effective fighting forces, earning victories over one another, and in the process displaying remarkable ingenuity and innovativeness.

Chandini Sankaran and Sankaran Ramanathan provide a catalog of examples and vignettes from two versions of the movie Dunkirk that illustrate many of the key principles of economics. As they point out, Hollywood’s portrayals of the Allies’ desperate attempt to save British and French soldiers from either death or capture during the early phase of the battle for France in May of 1940 provide near-countless examples of opportunity cost, scarcity, rational decision making and the ubiquitous trade-off between equity and efficiency. Sankaran and Ramanathan use the economic concept of market structure to explain how a progression from the British military monopoly on evacuation space to a competitive environment wherein private ship captains assisted in the evacuation plan was a critical feature in the successful rescue of 336,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches at Dunkirk, which is the crux of this historical episode, and of the two motion pictures. Lastly, in discussing the Allies’ choice to remain on the beach at Dunkirk and face the Germans or to evacuate the beach for the safety of England, Sankaran and Ramanathan are able to provide examples of the importance of elements of the game theory approach to the study of industrial organization to the Allied rescue effort.

Next, the chapter by Rebecca G. Chambers and Mixon illustrates the core economic concepts of production possibilities, division of labor and specialization using details from the movie Memphis Belle. In doing so they describe how each member of the 10-man crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress is, as depicted in the movie, responsible for specific tasks during a strategic bombing mission, and how it is the proficiency developed from practice and repetition of these tasks that enables the crew of the Memphis Belle to survive 25 bombing missions over Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Moreover, with each successful mission carried out by the crew of the Memphis Belle and those of other B-17s, the U.S. Air Force was, as Chambers and Mixon explain, able to damage Germany’s production capabilities and reduce its production possibilities frontier.

In the final chapter, Mixon and Kamal P. Upadhyaya illustrate how many of the behavioral economics concepts relating to human judgment and decision making that have been developed and advanced by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman are prominent features of the motion picture Saving Private Ryan and the television mini-series titled Band of Brothers. Central tenets of Kahneman’s behavioral approach are System 1 and System 2 forms of human judgment. While the former is described as fast, intuitive and emotional, the latter is defined as slow, deliberate and logical. Moreover, while we like to believe that System 2 judgment guides all of our decision making, System 1 judgment often, and fortunately so, plays a dominant role, such as in “heat of the battle” moments where fast thinking is a requisite element of success. In this chapter, Mixon and Upadhyaya take Kahneman’s theoretical concepts to the big screen, where Captain John Miller, a key figure in Saving Private Ryan, often makes split-second decisions on which the lives of those in his small rescue team depend.

Note

1    The Esquire Editors. 2019. “The Best Movies to Stream on Netflix Right Now.” Esquire. Retrieved from https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/g26826196/best-war-movies-on-netflix/