Preempting versus Postponing: the Stealing Game

We present an endogenous timing game of action commitment in which play- ers can steal from each other parts of a homogeneous and perfectly divisible pie and the expected effectiveness of a player?s theft is proportional to the amount he currently owns. We show how the incentives to preempt or to follow the rivals change with the number of players involved in the game and we inves- tigate the conditions that lead to the occurrence of symmetric or asymmetric equilibria.