ECON Webinar by Mehmet S. Ismail (King's College London)

ECON WEBINAR

Proportional resource allocation in dynamic n-player Blotto games

by

MEHMET S. ISMAIL

(KING'S COLLEGE LONDON)

NOVEMBER 04, 2020

13.00-14:15

https://sabanciuniv.zoom.us/j/98832517138

Abstract: We introduce a novel and general model of dynamic n-player Blotto contests. The players have asymmetric resources, the battlefields are heterogenous, and contest success functions are general as well. We obtain one possibility and one impossibility result. When players maximize the expected value of the battles, the strategy profile in which players allocate their resources proportional to the sizes of the battles at every history---whether their resources are fixed from the beginning or can be subject to shocks in time---is a subgame perfect equilibrium. However, when players maximize the probability of winning, there is always a distribution of values over the battles such that proportional resource allocation cannot be supported as an equilibrium.