Resource Allocation Under General Conflict Structure

ABSTRACT In this paper, we study a large class of multi‐contestant multi‐battle resource allocation contests, where contestants can be asymmetric in terms of both resource budgets and battle valuations, battles can be heterogeneous in terms of both contest success functions (CSFs) and battle valuations, and the conflict network can be arbitrary. Under a set of axioms satisifed by a broad range of stochastic contests, we prove the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium (PSNE) of the contest, which is the first equilibrium existence result regarding resource allocation contests with contestant‐and‐battle‐specific valuations under general conflict networks. Furthermore, we show that proportional strategy profile is the unique PSNE under full participation, contestant‐symmetric valuation, and Tullock CSFs with discriminatory power , while the interleaving strategy profile is the one under ring structure, interleaving valuation, symmetric value and lottery CSFs.