Equilibrium Architecture in Multi-Battle Contests with Count-Dependent Prizes

Zhonghong Kuang and Jingfeng Lu

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We study how aggregating local victories shapes participation and equilibrium uniqueness. Two contestants with possibly different marginal costs compete across identical Tullock battlefields with discriminatory power at most one. A nonconstant, nondecreasing, symmetric schedule divides a fixed prize by victory count. We establish existence and show that every realized equilibrium allocation divides effort equally across battlefields. Equilibrium is unique through six battlefields, with at most two effort levels per contestant; seven first permits multiple equilibria or randomization by both contestants. The prize schedule and technology, not the cost ratio, determine whether equilibria use infinitely many effort levels; in that case, cost asymmetry changes only the higher-cost contestant's participation probability. Under majority rule, we characterize the unique equilibrium for every battlefield count and cost ratio.

Date: 2026-09, Revised 2026-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-mic
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.02031 Latest version (application/pdf)

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:arx:papers:2609.02031

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().