IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qmw/qmwecw/779.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Experiment on Non-Zero Sum Colonel Blotto Games

Author

Listed:
  • Rafael Hortala-Vallve

    (London School of Economics)

  • Aniol Llorente-Saguer

    (Queen Mary University of London)

Abstract

We study a version of the Colonel Blotto game where valuations across battlefields are heterogeneous and asymmetric. These games can exhibit unique pure strategy equilibria, some of which are non-monotonic with respect to the battlefield valuations. We test our theoretical predictions in the laboratory and find low initial levels of equilibrium play but substantial learning throughout the experiment. Learning is higher for games with monotonic equilibria. Finally, we find that deviations from equilibrium predictions benefit aggregate welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Aniol Llorente-Saguer, 2015. "An Experiment on Non-Zero Sum Colonel Blotto Games," Working Papers 779, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:779
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sef/media/econ/research/workingpapers/2015/items/wp779.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B., 1993. "Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities Under Alternative Electoral Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 856-869, December.
    2. Subhasish Chowdhury & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2013. "An experimental investigation of Colonel Blotto games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(3), pages 833-861, April.
    3. Nicola Persico & Alessandro Lizzeri, 2001. "The Provision of Public Goods under Alternative Electoral Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 225-239, March.
    4. Brian Roberson & Dmitriy Kvasov, 2012. "The non-constant-sum Colonel Blotto game," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(2), pages 397-433, October.
    5. Avrahami, Judith & Kareev, Yaakov & Todd, Peter M. & Silverman, Boaz, 2014. "Allocation of resources in asymmetric competitions: How do the weak maintain a chance of winning?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 161-174.
    6. Kvasov, Dmitriy, 2007. "Contests with limited resources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 738-748, September.
    7. Duffy, John & Matros, Alexander, 2017. "Stochastic asymmetric Blotto games: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 88-105.
    8. Rafael Hortala-Vallve, 2012. "Qualitative voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 526-554, October.
    9. Georganas, Sotiris & Healy, Paul J. & Weber, Roberto A., 2015. "On the persistence of strategic sophistication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 369-400.
    10. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Rosemarie Nagel, 2013. "The role of information in different bargaining protocols," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(1), pages 88-113, March.
    11. Arad, Ayala & Rubinstein, Ariel, 2012. "Multi-dimensional iterative reasoning in action: The case of the Colonel Blotto game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 571-585.
    12. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Aniol Llorente-Saguer, 2012. "Pure strategy Nash equilibria in non-zero sum colonel Blotto games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 41(2), pages 331-343, May.
    13. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    14. Jean-François Laslier, 2005. "Party Objectives in the “Divide a Dollar” Electoral Competition," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: David Austen-Smith & John Duggan (ed.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pages 113-130, Springer.
    15. John Duffy & Alexander Matros, 2013. "Stochastic Asymmetric Blotto Games: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper 509, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Nov 2013.
    16. Daniel G. Arce & Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2012. "Weakest‐link attacker‐defender games with multiple attack technologies," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(6), pages 457-469, September.
    17. Laslier, Jean-Francois & Picard, Nathalie, 2002. "Distributive Politics and Electoral Competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 106-130, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Duffy, John & Matros, Alexander, 2017. "Stochastic asymmetric Blotto games: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 88-105.
    2. Fehrler, Sebastian & Schneider, Maik T., 2021. "Buying supermajorities in the lab," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 113-154.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Aniol Llorente-Saguer, 2015. "An Experiment on Non-Zero Sum Colonel Blotto Games," Working Papers 779, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    2. Subhasish M Chowdhury & Dan Kovenock & David Rojo Arjona & Nathaniel T Wilcox, 2021. "Focality and Asymmetry in Multi-Battle Contests," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(636), pages 1593-1619.
    3. Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2019. "The attack and defense of weakest-link networks," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(3), pages 175-194, June.
    4. Duffy, John & Matros, Alexander, 2017. "Stochastic asymmetric Blotto games: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 88-105.
    5. Arad, Ayala & Penczynski, Stefan P., 2024. "Multi-dimensional reasoning in competitive resource allocation games: Evidence from intra-team communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 355-377.
    6. Caroline Thomas, 2018. "N-dimensional Blotto game with heterogeneous battlefield values," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(3), pages 509-544, May.
    7. Subhasish Chowdhury & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2013. "An experimental investigation of Colonel Blotto games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(3), pages 833-861, April.
    8. Shakun D. Mago & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2017. "Multi‐battle Contests: An Experimental Study," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(2), pages 407-425, October.
    9. Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2021. "Generalizations of the General Lotto and Colonel Blotto games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(3), pages 997-1032, April.
    10. John Duffy & Alexander Matros, 2013. "Stochastic Asymmetric Blotto Games: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper 509, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Nov 2013.
    11. Fehrler, Sebastian & Schneider, Maik T., 2021. "Buying supermajorities in the lab," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 113-154.
    12. Deck, Cary & Sarangi, Sudipta & Wiser, Matt, 2017. "An experimental investigation of simultaneous multi-battle contests with strategic complementarities," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 117-134.
    13. Casella, Alessandra & Laslier, Jean-François & Macé, Antonin, 2017. "Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 239-259.
    14. Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2018. "The Optimal Defense Of Networks Of Targets," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(4), pages 2195-2211, October.
    15. Shakun D. Mago & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2019. "New Hampshire Effect: behavior in sequential and simultaneous multi-battle contests," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(2), pages 325-349, June.
    16. Maria Montero & Alex Possajennikov & Martin Sefton & Theodore Turocy, 2013. "Majoritarian Contests with Asymmetric Battlefields: An Experiment," Discussion Papers 2013-12, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    17. Maria Montero & Alex Possajennikov & Martin Sefton & Theodore Turocy, 2016. "Majoritarian Blotto contests with asymmetric battlefields: an experiment on apex games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(1), pages 55-89, January.
    18. Boix-Adserà, Enric & Edelman, Benjamin L. & Jayanti, Siddhartha, 2021. "The multiplayer Colonel Blotto game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 15-31.
    19. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    20. Denter, Philipp, 2020. "Campaign contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Colonel Blotto; Non-zero sum; Experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicholas Owen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deqmwuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.