Existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibrium in electoral competition games: The hybrid case

Alejandro Saporiti

No WP50, Wallis Working Papers from University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy

Abstract: This paper analyzes the traditional unidimensional, two-party electoral competition game when parties have mixed motivations, in the sense that they are interested in winning the election, but also in the policy implemented after the contest. In spite of having discontinuous payoffs, this game, refer to as the hybrid election game, is shown to be payoff secure and reciprocally upper semi-continuous. Conditional payoffs, however, are not quasi-concave. Hence, the existence of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium (PSNE) is ensured only if parties have homogenous interests in power. In that case, an equilibrium not only exists, but it is also unique. Instead, if parties have heterogeneous motivations, depending upon the relationship between the electoral uncertainty, the aggregate opportunism and its distribution across parties, a psne may or may not exist. The mixed extension, however, is always better reply secure. Therefore, a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium do indeed exist. These results generalize previous existence results in unidimensional electoral competition.

Keywords: Electoral competition; mixed motivations; discontinuous games; Nash equilibrium. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2007-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth, nep-mic and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Electoral Competition Games: The Hybrid Case (2008)
Working Paper: Existence and uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in electoral competition games: The hybrid case (2007)
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