Fight or Flight? Defending Against Sequential Attacks in the Game of Siege
Abstract
This paper examines theory and behavior in a two-player game of siege, sequential attack and defense. The attacker’s objective is to successfully win at least one battle while the defender’s objective is to win every battle. Theoretically, the defender either folds immediately or, if his valuation is sufficiently high and the number of battles is sufficiently small, then he has a constant incentive to fight in each battle. Attackers respond to defense with diminishing assaults over time. Consistent with theoretical predictions, our experimental results indicate that the probability of successful defense increases in the defenders valuation and it decreases in the overall number of battles in the contest. However, the defender engages in the contest significantly more often than predicted and the aggregate expenditures by both parties exceed predicted levels. Moreover, both defenders and attackers actually increase the intensity of the fight as they approach the end of the contest.Download Info
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Paper provided by Chapman University, Economic Science Institute in its series Working Papers with number 10-20.Length: 30 pages
Date of creation: 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:10-20
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Related research
Keywords: Colonel Blotto; conflict resolution; weakest-link; game of siege; multi-period resource allocation; experiments.;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
- C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
- D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2010-10-30 (All new papers)
- NEP-EXP-2010-10-30 (Experimental Economics)
- NEP-GTH-2010-10-30 (Game Theory)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Shakun D. Mago & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2012. "Multi-Battle Contests: An Experimental Study," Working Papers 12-06, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
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