Generalizations of the General Lotto and Colonel Blotto Games

Economic Science Institute Working Paper No. 15-07

39 Pages Posted: 27 Mar 2015

See all articles by Dan Kovenock

Dan Kovenock

Chapman University - Economic Science Institute; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Brian Roberson

Purdue University - Department of Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: March 23, 2015

Abstract

In this paper, we generalize the General Lotto game (budget constraints satisfied in expectation) and the Colonel Blotto game (budget constraints hold with probability one) to allow for battlefield valuations that are heterogeneous across battlefields and asymmetric across players, and for the players to have asymmetric resource constraints. We completely characterize Nash equilibrium in the generalized version of the General Lotto game and then show how this characterization can be applied to identify equilibria in the Colonel Blotto version of the game. In both games, we find that there exist sets of non-pathological parameter configurations of positive Lebesgue measure with multiple payoff nonequivalent equilibria.

Keywords: Colonel Blotto game, General Lotto game, Multi-battle contest, Redistributive politics, All-pay auction

JEL Classification: C72, D72, D74

Suggested Citation

Kovenock, Daniel and Roberson, Brian, Generalizations of the General Lotto and Colonel Blotto Games (March 23, 2015). Economic Science Institute Working Paper No. 15-07, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2585352 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2585352

Daniel Kovenock (Contact Author)

Chapman University - Economic Science Institute ( email )

1 University Drive
Orange, CA 92866
United States

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.CESifo.de

Brian Roberson

Purdue University - Department of Economics ( email )

West Lafayette, IN 47907-1310
United States

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