Sequential Majoritarian Blotto Games
33 Pages Posted: 5 Jun 2018
There are 2 versions of this paper
Date Written: June 4, 2018
Abstract
We study Colonel Blotto games with sequential battles and a majoritarian objective. For a large class of contest success functions, the equilibrium is unique and characterized by an even split: Each battle that is reached before one of the players wins a majority of battles is allocated the same amount of resources from the player's overall budget. As a consequence, a player's chance of winning any particular battle is independent of the battlefield and of the number of victories and losses the player accumulated in prior battles. This result is in stark contrast to equilibrium behavior in sequential contests that do not involve either fixed budgets or a majoritarian objective. We also consider the equilibrium choice of an overall budget. For many contest success functions, if the sequence of battles is long enough the payoff structure in this extended games resembles an all-pay auction without noise.
Keywords: Blotto games, dynamic battles, multi-battle contest, all-pay auctions
JEL Classification: D72, D74
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation