Choosing Fair Lotteries to Defeat the Competition

Liad Wagman, Vincent Conitzer
2013 Social Science Research Network  
We study the following game: each agent i chooses a lottery over nonnegative numbers whose expectation is equal to his budget b i . The agent with the highest realized outcome wins (and agents only care about winning). This game is motivated by various real-world settings where agents each choose a gamble and the primary goal is to come out ahead. Such settings include patent races, stock market competitions, and R&D tournaments. We show that there is a unique symmetric equilibrium when budgets
more » ... are equal. We proceed to study and solve extensions, including settings where agents must obtain a minimum outcome to win; where agents choose their budgets (at a cost); and where budgets are private information. JEL classifications: C70, C72, D81, L20
doi:10.2139/ssrn.2320643 fatcat:tuobpogumnbz5e6f7q2qulpvcu