Allocation of Heterogeneous Resources in General Lotto Games

Keith Paarporn, Adel Aghajan and Jason R. Marden

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: The allocation of resources plays an important role in the completion of system objectives and tasks, especially in the presence of strategic adversaries. Optimal allocation strategies are becoming increasingly more complex, given that multiple heterogeneous types of resources are at a system planner's disposal. In this paper, we focus on deriving optimal strategies for the allocation of heterogeneous resources in a well-known competitive resource allocation model known as the General Lotto game. In standard formulations, outcomes are determined solely by the players' allocation strategies of a common, single type of resource across multiple contests. In particular, a player wins a contest if it sends more resources than the opponent. Here, we propose a multi-resource extension where the winner of a contest is now determined not only by the amount of resources allocated, but also by the composition of resource types that are allocated. We completely characterize the equilibrium payoffs and strategies for two distinct formulations. The first consists of a weakest-link/best-shot winning rule, and the second considers a winning rule based on a weighted linear combination of the allocated resources. We then consider a scenario where the resource types are costly to purchase, and derive the players' equilibrium investments in each of the resource types.

Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth, nep-mic and nep-spo
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