Nobel laureate Robert J Aumann on Tuesday said that institutes of war sciences -- that dwell into what happens during war and why people go to war and related areas -- should be established to promote peace in the long-run.
Delivering the 'Nobel lecture on war and peace,' a joint initiative of Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and IBM, Aumann argued that war has been a constant factor in mankind's history.
"Nothing has been more constant in the world than war," said Aumann, who won the Nobel prize in economics in 2005.
Noting that there are 'trouble-spots' all over the world, including India-Pakistan and the Middle-East, he said the emphasis should shift on war in general. One needed to study 'incentives' that lead to war, he felt.
"To promote peace in the long-run, we should have institutes of war sciences -- what happens during war and why people go to war," the 76-year-old, who joined the mathematics department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1956, and has been there ever since, told a packed audience at the national science seminar complex of IISc in Bangalore.
"Repetition enables cooperation," stressed Aumann, who was the first to make a comprehensive formal analysis of so-called infinitely repeated games to strategic thinking about 'conflict and cooperation,' emphasising the types of outcomes that can be upheld over time in the context of long-run economic relations.
