The attack-and-defense group contests: Best-shot versus weakest-link

Modak Chowdhury, Subhasish and Topolyan, Iryna (2016) The attack-and-defense group contests: Best-shot versus weakest-link. Economic Inquiry, 54 (1). 548–557. ISSN 1465-7295

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Abstract

This study analyzes a group contest in which one group (defenders) follows a weakest-link whereas the other group (attackers) follows a best-shot impact function. We fully characterize the Nash and coalition-proof equilibria and show that with symmetric valuation the coalition-proof equilibrium is unique up to the permutation of the identity of the active player in the attacker group. With asymmetric valuation it is always an equilibrium for one of the highest valuation players to be active; it may also be the case that the highest valuation players in the attacker group free-ride completely on a group-member with a lower valuation. However, in any equilibrium, only one player in the attacker group is active, whereas all the players in the defender group are active and exert the same effort. We also characterize the Nash and coalition-proof equilibria for the case in which one group follows either a best-shot or a weakest-link but the other group follows an additive impact function.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Uncontrolled Keywords: best-shot,weakest-link,perfect substitute,group contest,attack and defense,group-specific public goods,avoidance
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 20 Aug 2015 13:18
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2023 09:16
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54053
DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12246

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