Generalizations of the General Lotto and Colonel Blotto Games

40 Pages Posted: 23 Apr 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: April 23, 2015

Abstract

In this paper, we generalize the General Lotto game and the Colonel Blotto game 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: C720, D720, D740

Suggested Citation

Kovenock, Daniel and Roberson, Brian, Generalizations of the General Lotto and Colonel Blotto Games (April 23, 2015). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 5291, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2597975 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2597975

Daniel Kovenock

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 (Contact Author)

Purdue University - Department of Economics ( email )

West Lafayette, IN 47907-1310
United States

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