PERFECT RECALL AND PRUNING IN GAMES WITH IMPERFECT INFORMATION 1

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72986/1/j.1467-8640.1996.tb00256.x.pd

An Experimental Investigation of Colonel Blotto Games

"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 all major theoretical predictions. In the auction treatment, where winning a battlefield is deterministic, disadvantaged players use a 'guerilla warfare' strategy which stochastically allocates zero resources to a subset of battlefields. Advantaged players employ a 'stochastic complete coverage' strategy, allocating random, but positive, resource levels across the battlefields. In the lottery treatment, where winning a battlefield is probabilistic, both players divide their resources equally across all battlefields." (author's abstract)"Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhalten von Individuen in einem 'constant-sum Colonel Blotto'-Spiel zwischen zwei Spielern, bei dem die Spieler mit unterschiedlichen Ressourcen ausgestattet sind und die erwartete Anzahl gewonnener Schlachtfelder maximieren. Die experimentellen Ergebnisse bestätigen alle wichtigen theoretischen Vorhersagen. Im Durchgang, in dem wie in einer Auktion der Sieg in einem Schlachtfeld deterministisch ist, wenden die Spieler, die sich im Nachteil befinden, eine 'Guerillataktik' an, und verteilen ihre Ressourcen stochastisch auf eine Teilmenge der Schlachtfelder. Spieler mit einem Vorteil verwenden eine Strategie der 'stochastischen vollständigen Abdeckung', indem sie zufällig eine positive Ressourcenmenge auf allen Schlachtfeldern positionieren. Im Durchgang, in dem sich der Gewinn eines Schlachtfeldes probabilistisch wie in einer Lotterie bestimmt, teilen beide Spieler ihre Ressourcen gleichmäßig auf alle Schlachtfelder auf." (Autorenreferat

Sabotage in Contests: A Survey

A contest is a situation in which individuals expend irretrievable resources to win valuable prize(s). ‘Sabotage’ is a deliberate and costly act of damaging a rival’s' likelihood of winning the contest. Sabotage can be observed in, e.g., sports, war, promotion tournaments, political or marketing campaigns. In this article, we provide a model and various perspectives on such sabotage activities and review the economics literature analyzing the act of sabotage in contests. We discuss the theories and evidence highlighting the means of sabotage, why sabotage occurs, and the effects of sabotage on individual players and on overall welfare, along with possible mechanisms to reduce sabotage. We note that most sabotage activities are aimed at the ablest player, the possibility of sabotage reduces productive effort exerted by the players, and sabotage may lessen the effectiveness of public policies, such as affirmative action, or information revelation in contests. We discuss various policies that a designer may employ to counteract sabotage activities. We conclude by pointing out some areas of future research

Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income

This Colloquium reviews statistical models for money, wealth, and income distributions developed in the econophysics literature since the late 1990s. By analogy with the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution of energy in physics, it is shown that the probability distribution of money is exponential for certain classes of models with interacting economic agents. Alternative scenarios are also reviewed. Data analysis of the empirical distributions of wealth and income reveals a two-class distribution. The majority of the population belongs to the lower class, characterized by the exponential ("thermal") distribution, whereas a small fraction of the population in the upper class is characterized by the power-law ("superthermal") distribution. The lower part is very stable, stationary in time, whereas the upper part is highly dynamical and out of equilibrium.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures; v.2 - minor stylistic changes and updates of references corresponding to the published versio

Side-Payments and the Costs of Conflict

Conflict and competition often impose costs on both winners and losers, and conflicting parties may prefer to resolve the dispute before it occurs. The equilibrium of a conflict game with side-payments predicts that with binding offers, proposers make and responders accept side-payments, generating settlements that strongly favor proposers. When side-payments are non-binding, proposers offer nothing and conflicts always arise. Laboratory experiments confirm that binding side-payments reduce conflicts. However, 30 % of responders reject binding offers, and offers are more egalitarian than predicted. Surprisingly, non-binding side-payments also improve efficiency, although less than binding. With binding side-payments, 87 % of efficiency gains come from avoided conflicts. However, with non-binding side-payments, only 39 % of gains come from avoided conflicts and 61 % from reduced conflict expenditures