Costly Force Relocation in the Colonel Blotto Game

17 Pages Posted: 9 Jan 2019 Last revised: 30 Mar 2020

See all articles by Brian Roberson

Brian Roberson

Purdue University

Oz Shy

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Date Written: March 28, 2020

Abstract

This paper examines a new extensive-form variation of the Colonel Blotto game with two distinct features: (i) in the first stage each player inherits an initial allocation of force across battlefields, which is publicly observable, and (ii) in the second stage it is costly to relocate forces across battlefields. A first-stage pair of allocations of force is said to be stable if there exists an equilibrium of the two-stage game in which neither player relocates any forces from one battlefield to another. We examine the set of stable initial allocations as a function of the implicit and explicit costs of relocating forces.

Keywords: Colonel Blotto game, switching cost, pure-strategy equilibrium

JEL Classification: C72, D72

Suggested Citation

Roberson, Brian and Shy, Oz, Costly Force Relocation in the Colonel Blotto Game (March 28, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3306880 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3306880

Brian Roberson

Purdue University ( email )

610 Purdue Mall
West Lafayette, IN 47907
United States

Oz Shy (Contact Author)

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta ( email )

1000 Peachtree Street N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30309-4470
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.frbatlanta.org/research/economists/shy-oz.aspx?panel=1

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