No |
SDES-2023-3 |
Title |
Asymmetric majority pillage games |
Author |
Manfred Kerber, Colin Rowat and Naoki Yoshihara |
Abstract |
We study pillage games (Jordan in J Econ Theory 131.1:26–44, 2006,
“Pillage and property”), which model unstructured power contests. To enable
empirical tests of pillage game theory, we relax a symmetry assumption
that agents’ intrinsic contributions to a coalition’s power is identical. We
characterise the core for all n. In the three-agent game: (i) only eight configurations
are possible for the core, which contains at most six allocations;
(ii) for each core configuration, the stable set is either unique or fails to
exist; (iii) the linear power function creates a tension between a stable set’s
existence and the interiority of its allocations, so that only special cases contain
strictly interior allocations. Our analysis suggests that non-linear power
functions may oer better empirical tests of pillage game theory. |
Revised version published in |
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