 From Custer to Thermopylae: Last stand behavior in multi-stage contestsAlan Gelder Games and Economic Behavior, 2014, vol. 87, issue C, 442-466 Abstract: In a multi-stage contest known as a two-player race, players display two fundamental behaviors: (1) the laggard will make a last stand in order to avoid the cost of losing; and (2) the player who is ahead will defend his lead if it is threatened. Last stand behavior, in particular, contrasts with previous research where the underdog simply gives up. The distinctive results are achieved by introducing losing penalties and discounting into the racing environment. This framework permits the momentum effect, typically ascribed to the winner of early stages, to be more thoroughly examined. I study the likelihood that the underdog will catch up. I find that neck-and-neck races are common when the losing penalty is large relative to the winning prize, while landslide victories occur when the prize is relatively large. Closed-form solutions are given for the case where players have a common winning prize and losing penalty. Keywords: Last stand; Dynamic contest; Race; All-pay auction; Winning momentum (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:87:y:2014:i:c:p:442-466 DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.06.003 Access Statistics for this article Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier |
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