We suggest an alternative way of analyzing the canonical Bergstrom-Blume-Varian model of non-cooperative voluntary contributions to a public goodthat avoids the proliferation of dimensions as the number of players is in-creased. We exploit this approach to analyze models in which the...

We study aggregative games in which players’ strategy sets areconvex intervals of the real line and (not necessarily differentiable)payoffs depend only on a player’s own strategy and the sum of allplayers’ strategies. We give sufficient conditions on each player’s payofffunction to...

We show that the presence of loss aversion on the part of participantsin a Tullock imperfectly discriminating contest will significantlyreduce the proportion of the rent dissipated in the form of resourcesused up in the competition for that rent...

We exploit the aggregative structure of the public good modelto provide a simple analysis of the voluntary contribution game. Incontrast to the best response function approach, ours avoids the pro-liferation of dimensions as the number of players is increased, andcan readily analyse games...

This paper considers the extent to which expenditure by contestants inimperfectly discriminating rent-seeking contests dissipates all or only partof the rent. In particular, we investigate strategic effects, technologicaleffects and asymmetry under an assumption of diminishing returns to...

Noncooperative games in which each player’s payo¤ function depends on anadditively separable function of every player’s choice variable may be transformedinto an aggregative game, which may be analysed using the conceptof ‘share functions’. The resulting approach avoids the...

We investigate the Nash equilibria of asymmetric, winner-take-all, imperfectlydiscriminating contests, focussing on existence, uniqueness and rentdissipation. When the contest success function is determined by a productionfunction with decreasing returns for each contestant, equilibria...

The rent-seeking model of Tullock (1980) has stimulated a large literature on rent-seekingcontests, of which Hillman (1989) and Nitzan (1994) provide useful surveys. AlthoughTullock's 'winner take all' model has been adapted and extended in numerous ways, thereremain fundamental modeling issues,...

Player i's payoff in a noncooperative game is generally expressed as a function of thevector of strategies of all players. However, in some games - 'simply reducible games' - thepayoff of player i is a function of two arguments - the strategy chosen by i, and the sum ofthe strategies of all...