Discriminatory power and pure strategy Nash equilibrium in the lottery Blotto game

Abstract This paper highlights the role of discriminatory power in showing the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium in a two-player lottery Blotto game. Precisely, when the discriminatory power of the contest success function in every battle is less than or equal to one, a pure strategy Nash equilibrium always exists for any prizes and budgets. However, we construct examples in which pure strategy Nash equilibrium fails to exist as long as the discriminatory power of only one battle exceeds one.