This paper examines multi-battle contests whose extensive form can be represented in terms of a finite state machine. We start by showing that any contest that satisfies our assumptions decomposes into two phases, a principal phase (in which states cannot be revisited) and a concluding...

We consider symmetric rent-seeking contests with independent private valuations of the contest prize. For a two-parameter specification with continuous types, we fully characterize the Bayesian equilibrium, and study its basic properties. The willingness to waste is a hump-shaped function of the...

It is argued that bidders in liquidity-providing central bank operations should typically possess declining marginal valuations. Based on this hypothesis, we construct equilibrium in central bank refinancing operations organised as variable rate tenders. In the case of the discriminatory pricing...

It has been argued in the literature that emergency liquidity injections should be conducted preferably in the form of open market operations. As we show in the present paper, this is not necessarily the case when liquidity may be alternatively used for speculative purposes during the crisis. In...

We study the problem of a leveraged investor that is forced to unwind a significant fraction of its portfolio in a collection of illiquid markets. It is shown that markets may become disrupted in response to a relatively small liquidity shock. As a consequence, the probability of default can be...

The Hotelling game of pure location allows interpretations in spatial competition, political theory, and professional forecasting. In this paper, the doubly symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium for n ≥ 4 firms is characterized as the solution of a well-behaved boundary value problem. The...

This paper studies a large class of imperfectly discriminating contests, referred to as elastic contests, that induce players to either overbid a standing bid or to abstain from bidding altogether. Many common forms of contest are elastic. In any equilibrium of an elastic contest, there is...

A random variable is difference-form decomposable (DFD) if it may be written as the difference of two i.i.d. random terms. We show that densities of such variables exhibit a remarkable degree of structure. Specifically, a DFD density can be neither approximately uniform, nor quasiconvex, nor...

While the game-theoretic analysis of conflict is often based on the assumption of multiplicative noise, additive noise such as considered by Hirshleifer (1989) may be equally plausible depending on the application. In this paper, we examine the equilibrium set of the n-player difference-form...