Sabotaging potential rivals

This paper studies sabotage in a contest with non-identical players. Unlike previous papers, we consider sabotage in an elimination contest and allow contestants to sabotage a potential or future rival. It turns out that for a certain seeding of players there is a pure-strategy equilibrium in which...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social choice and welfare 2007-01, Vol.28 (1), p.143-162
Main Authors: Amegashie, J. Atsu, Runkel, Marco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Auctions
Candidates
Contests
Dominant strategy
Economic theory
Election results
Elections
Equilibrium
Game Theory
Nash equilibrium
Negative campaigning
Nominations
Political candidates
Political parties
Primaries & caucuses
Return on investment
Sabotage
Seeding
State elections
Strategies
Studies
Valuation
Voting
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Summary:This paper studies sabotage in a contest with non-identical players. Unlike previous papers, we consider sabotage in an elimination contest and allow contestants to sabotage a potential or future rival. It turns out that for a certain seeding of players there is a pure-strategy equilibrium in which only the most able contestant engages in sabotage while less able contestants do not. The most able contestant may therefore prefer a situation where sabotage is allowed to one where sabotage is not allowed. For another seeding of players, there is a unique equilibrium in which none of the players invests in sabotage.
ISSN:0176-1714
1432-217X
DOI:10.1007/s00355-006-0157-4