Generalizations of the General Lotto and Colonel Blotto games

In this paper, we generalize the General Lotto game and the Colonel Blotto game to allow for battlefield valuations that are heterogeneous across battlefields and asymmetric across players, and for the players to have asymmetric resource constraints. We completely characterize Nash equilibrium in the generalized version of the General Lotto game and then show how this characterization can be applied to identify equilibria in the Colonel Blotto version of the game. In both games, we find that there exist sets of non-pathological parameter configurations of positive Lebesgue measure with multiple payoff nonequivalent equilibria.

[1]  Robert M. Bell,et al.  Competitive Optimality of Logarithmic Investment , 1980, Math. Oper. Res..

[2]  B. Roberson The Colonel Blotto game , 2006 .

[3]  Sergiu Hart,et al.  Discrete Colonel Blotto and General Lotto games , 2008, Int. J. Game Theory.

[4]  Fangzhen Lin,et al.  Designing competitions between teams of individuals , 2010, Artif. Intell..

[5]  Dan Kovenock,et al.  Conflicts with Multiple Battlefields , 2010, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[6]  É. Borel The Theory of Play and Integral Equations with Skew Symmetric Kernels , 1953 .

[7]  Jean-François Laslier,et al.  Distributive Politics and Electoral Competition , 2002, J. Econ. Theory.

[8]  Oliver Alfred Gross,et al.  A Continuous Colonel Blotto Game , 1950 .

[9]  Bill Ravens,et al.  An Introduction to Copulas , 2000, Technometrics.

[10]  Aniol Llorente-Saguer,et al.  Pure strategy Nash equilibria in non-zero sum colonel Blotto games , 2012, Int. J. Game Theory.

[11]  Balázs Szentes,et al.  Beyond chopsticks: Symmetric equilibria in majority auction games , 2003, Games Econ. Behav..

[12]  Marco Scarsini,et al.  A Colonel Blotto Gladiator Game , 2012, Math. Oper. Res..

[13]  Benoît S. Y. Crutzen,et al.  Redistributive politics with distortionary taxation , 2008, J. Econ. Theory.

[14]  Jonathan Weinstein,et al.  Two Notes on the Blotto Game , 2012 .

[15]  Alessandro Lizzeri,et al.  The provision of public goods under alternative electoral incentives , 2001 .

[16]  Nick Mastronardi,et al.  Waging simple wars: a complete characterization of two-battlefield Blotto equilibria , 2015 .

[17]  Srihari Govindan,et al.  Competition for a Majority , 2012 .

[18]  L. Friedman Game-Theory Models in the Allocation of Advertising Expenditures , 1958 .

[19]  L. M. MILNE-THOMSON,et al.  Théorie mathématique du bridge à la portée de tous , 1946, Nature.

[20]  Nicolas Sahuguet,et al.  Campaign spending regulation in a model of redistributive politics , 2006 .

[21]  Brian Roberson,et al.  Pork-Barrel Politics, Targetable Policies, and Fiscal Federalism , 2008 .

[22]  A. Robson Multi-item contests , 2005 .

[23]  Marcin Dziubinski,et al.  Non-symmetric discrete General Lotto games , 2013, Int. J. Game Theory.

[24]  Sergiu Hart,et al.  Allocation games with caps: from Captain Lotto to all-pay auctions , 2016, Int. J. Game Theory.

[25]  Berthold Schweizer,et al.  Probabilistic Metric Spaces , 2011 .

[26]  B. Roberson,et al.  The non-constant-sum Colonel Blotto game , 2008, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[27]  Balázs Szentes,et al.  Three-object two-bidder simultaneous auctions: chopsticks and tetrahedra , 2003, Games Econ. Behav..

[28]  S. Shankar Sastry,et al.  The heterogeneous Colonel Blotto game , 2014, 2014 7th International Conference on NETwork Games, COntrol and OPtimization (NetGCoop).

[29]  J. Riley,et al.  Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers , 1989 .

[30]  A. Lizzeri,et al.  A Drawback Of Electoral Competition , 2005 .

[31]  Dmitriy Kvasov,et al.  Contests with limited resources , 2007, J. Econ. Theory.

[32]  Jean-François Laslier,et al.  How two-party competition treats minorities , 2002 .

[33]  Scott E. Page,et al.  General Blotto: games of allocative strategic mismatch , 2009 .

[34]  Dan Kovenock,et al.  Electoral Poaching and Party Identification , 2005 .

[35]  R. Myerson Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities Under Alternative Electoral Systems , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[36]  R. Sundaram A First Course in Optimization Theory: Bibliography , 1996 .

[37]  Sylvain Béal,et al.  Average tree solutions and the distribution of Harsanyi dividends , 2011, Int. J. Game Theory.

[38]  Alan Washburn,et al.  OR Forum - Blotto Politics , 2013, Oper. Res..

[39]  Michael R. Baye,et al.  The all-pay auction with complete information , 1990 .