Equilibria in Continuous Time Preemption Games with Markovian Payoffs

Abstract

This paper studies timing games in continuous time where payoffs are stochastic and strongly Markovian. The main interest is in characterizing equilibria where players preempt each other along almost every sample path. It is found that the existence of such preemption equilibria depends crucially on whether there is a coordination mechanism that allows for rent equalization or not, and whether the stochastic payoffs admit upward jumps. Through numerical examples it is argued that the possibility of such coordination improves social welfare and that the welfare loss due to preemption decreases in uncertainty.Timing Games, Real Options, Preemption