Correlated play in weakest-link and best-shot group contests

Stefano Barbieri and Iryna Topolyan

Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2024, vol. 110, issue C

Abstract: We explore public randomization (Harris et al., 1995) in group contests and introduce group public randomization equilibria (GPRE). We consider group all-pay auctions with weakest-link and best-shot impact functions. While best-shot contests without public randomization are known for their multiplicity of equilibria, introducing public randomization results in a unique GPRE in which only one of the strongest players in each group is active. However, in the weakest-link case, the well-known multiplicity of equilibria becomes even more pronounced with public randomization. Despite this multiplicity, a refinement that selects GPRE immune to coalitional deviations reduces the gamut of GPRE to a unique equilibrium group-effort distribution, which, for identical groups composed of identical agents, features the highest expected total effort among all equilibria of the full information game without correlation devices. The (weak) increase in expected efforts due to correlated strategies is also observed in the best-shot case.

Keywords: All-pay auction, Correlated equilibrium, Public randomization, Best shot, Weakest link (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304406823001106
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:mateco:v:110:y:2024:i:c:s0304406823001106

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmateco.2023.102917

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Mathematical Economics is currently edited by Atsushi (A.) Kajii

More articles in Journal of Mathematical Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().