We study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent-seeking contests. Most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost, and find both overbidding relative to the Nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation of...

This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support the main qualitative predictions of the theory. In the auction treatment, where winning...

In this paper, in order to study the strategic interactions between “cooperation”, “defection” and “altruistic punishment”, a mutation-selection dynamic, with the Prisoner's Dilemma as the background, has been established on an embedded Markov chain, proved the following conclusions:...

In the paper, we re-investigate the long run behavior of an adaptive learning process driven by the stochastic replicator dynamics developed by Fudenberg and Harris (1992). It is demonstrated that the Nash equilibrium will be the robust limit of the adaptive learning process as long as it is...

In this paper, infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma game as a benchmark being used to build a new model as the payoff matrix of an evolutionary game dynamics, with the comparative study of game performances between the behavior- pattern “tit for tat” and the behavior-pattern “always...

In this paper, in order to study the strategic interactions between “cooperation”, “defection” and “altruistic punishment”, a mutation-selection dynamics, with the Prisoner's Dilemma as the background, has been established on an embedded Markov chain, proved the following...

In this paper, infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma game as a benchmark being used to build a new model as the payoff matrix of an evolutionary game dynamics, with the comparative study of game performances between the behavior- pattern “tit for tat” and the behavior-pattern “always...

Using a two-player Tullock-type contest we show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically equivalent. Strategically equivalent contests generate the same best response functions and, as a result, the same equilibrium efforts. However, strategically equivalent...

We find the sufficient conditions for the existence of multiple equilibria in Tullock-type contests, and show that asymmetric equilibria arise even under symmetric prize and cost structures. We then present existing contests where multiple equilibria exist under reasonably weak conditions.

We analyze a group contest in which n groups compete to win a group-specific public good prize. Group sizes can be different and any player may value the prize differently within and across groups. Players exert costly efforts simultaneously and independently. Only the highest effort (the...