The n-Person War of Attrition

John Haigh and Chris Cannings
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John Haigh: University of Sussex, Mathematics Division
Chris Cannings: The University, Department of Probability & Statistics

A chapter in Evolution and Control in Biological Systems, 1989, pp 59-74 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The War of Attrition (WA) was one of the earliest examples studied in the use of the theory of games to understand animal behavior (see Maynard Smith (1974)). The setup is that two contestants compete for a prize worth V(V > 0), and the one who is prepared to wait longer collects the prize; both contestants incur a cost equal to the length of time taken to resolve the contest. Symbolically, if E(x,y) denotes the amount gained by a contestant prepared to wait time x when the opponent is prepared to wait y, (1) $$ E\left( {x,y} \right) = \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}{c}} {V - y\quad if\;x > y} \\ { - x\quad if\;x 0} \right) $$ .

Keywords: 92A12; evolutionarily stability; war of attrition; strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-94-009-2358-4_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-2358-4_7

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