Focality and asymmetry in multi-battle contests

Subhasish Chowdhury, Dan Kovenock, David Rojo Arjona and Nathaniel Wilcox

No 16-12, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: This article examines behavior in two-person constant-sum Colonel Blotto games in which each player maximizes the expected total value of the battlefields won. A lottery contest success function is employed in each battlefield. Recent experimental research on such games provides only partial support for Nash equilibrium behavior. We hypothesize that the salience of battlefields affects strategic behavior (the salient target hypothesis). We present a controlled test of this hypothesis – against Nash predictions – when the sources of salience come from certain asymmetries in either battlefield values or labels (as in Schelling (1960)). In both cases, subjects over- allocate the resource to the salient battlefields relative to the Nash prediction. However, the effect is stronger with salient values. In the absence of salience, we replicate previous results in the literature supporting the Nash prediction.

Keywords: conflict; experiment; Colonel Blotto; focal point; asymmetry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Focality and Asymmetry in Multi-Battle Contests (2021)
Working Paper: Focality and Asymmetry in Multi-battle Contests (2016)
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