It is shown that the n-player lottery contest admits a best-response potential (Voorneveld, 2000, Economics Letters). This is true also when the contest technology reflects the possibility of a draw. The result implies, in particular, the existence of a non-trivial two-player zero-sum game that...

This paper examines multi-battle contests whose extensive form can be represented in terms of a finite state machine. We start by showing that any contest that satisfies our assumptions decomposes into two phases, a principal phase (in which states cannot be revisited) and a concluding...

This paper studies the dynamic construction of a blockchain by competitive miners. In contrast to the literature, we assume a finite time horizon. Moreover, miners are rewarded for blocks that eventually become part of the longest chain. It is shown that popular mining strategies such as...

We study the implications of flexible adjustment in strategic interactions using a class of finite-horizon models in continuous time. Players take costly actions to affect the evolution of state variables that are commonly observable and perturbed by Brownian noise. The values of these state...

The paper studies a dynamic communication game in the presence of adverse selection and career concerns. A forecaster of privately known competence, who cares about his reputation, chooses the timing of the forecast regarding the outcome of some future event. We find that in all equilibria in a...

We study communication in a two-player coordination game with Pareto-ranked equilibria. Prior research demonstrates that efficient coordination is difficult without communication but obtains regularly with (mandatory) costless pre-play messages. In a laboratory experiment, we modify...

This paper studies fictitious play in networks of noncooperative two-person games. We show that continuous-time fictitious play converges to the set of Nash equilibria if the overall n-person game is zero-sum. Moreover, the rate of convergence is 1/T, regardless of the size of the network. In...

We experimentally study settings where an individual may have an incentive to adopt negative beliefs about another's intentions in order to justify egoistic behavior. Our first study uses a game in which a player can take money from an opponent in order to prevent the opponent from subsequently...

Using data on one-shot games, we investigate the assumption that players respond to underlying expectations about their opponent's behavior. In our laboratory experiments, subjects play a set of 14 two-person 3x3 games, and state first order beliefs about their opponent's behavior. The sets of...

This paper studies collusion in repeated auctions when bidders communicate prior to each stage auction. The paper presents a folk theorem for independent and correlated private signals and general interdependent values. Specifically, it identifies conditions under which an equilibrium collusion...