Multi-battle contests over complementary battlefields

Daniel Stephenson ()
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Daniel Stephenson: Virginia Commonwealth University

Review of Economic Design, 2025, vol. 29, issue 3, No 11, 659-674

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies contests with complementary prizes where each agent simultaneously distributes a fixed budget over multiple battlefields. Each battlefield has a single prize which is divided among the competitors in proportion to an arbitrary power function of their investment levels. A unique pure strategy Nash equilibrium is shown to exist under arbitrarily sensitive battlefield success functions if objective functions exhibit constant subunitary elasticity of substitution between prize shares. In contrast, Blotto contests with linear objectives have only mixed strategy Nash equilibria if battlefield success functions are sufficiently sensitive to investment levels. Sufficient complementarity between prize shares allows pure strategy Nash equilibria to exist under arbitrarily sensitive battlefield success functions.

Keywords: Contest; Complement; Battlefield; Divisible; Equilibrium; Efficient (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D4 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10058-024-00351-3

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