Memoryless-Strategy Equilibria of a N-Player War of Attrition Game with Complete Information

Wang Hao ()
Additional contact information
Wang Hao: China Center for Economic Research, National School of Development, Peking University, Beijing, China

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, 2025, vol. 25, issue 1, 137-164

Abstract: Consider a war of attrition game in continuous time with complete information, in which N ≥ 2 players compete for N − K prizes. I focus on the equilibria in which the strategies follow exponential distributions, which are memoryless. When K = 1, such an equilibrium can be explicitly characterized. The equilibrium certainly exists if N = 2. If N ≥ 3, it exists as long as the weakest player is not too weak compared to the average. If it exists, the equilibrium is unique under some conditions. When K ≥ 2, the game typically has nondegenerate equilibria in which K − 1 relatively weak players concede at the beginning. The model can be extended to the case in which the players have loser-dependent valuations. The model helps to solve a generalized exit game in a “nature oligopoly” and an all-pay auction with ascending bids.

Keywords: all-pay auction; complete information; loser-dependent valuation; N-player; war of attrition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 H41 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejte-2024-0081 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:25:y:2025:i:1:p:137-164:n:1006

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyte ... urnal/key/bejte/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejte-2024-0081

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics is currently edited by Burkhard C. Schipper

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().