English
Related papers

Related papers: Distribution-Free Equilibrium in Search Contests

200 papers

The all-pay auction, a classic competitive model, is widely applied in scenarios such as political elections, sports competitions, and research and development, where all participants pay their bids regardless of winning or losing. However,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-24 Yan Liu , Ying Qin , Zihe Wang

We investigate multi-round team competitions between two teams, where each team selects one of its players simultaneously in each round and each player can play at most once. The competition defines an extensive-form game with perfect…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-02-25 Kai Jin , Pingzhong Tang , Shiteng Chen

In the design and analysis of revenue-maximizing auctions, auction performance is typically measured with respect to a prior distribution over inputs. The most obvious source for such a distribution is past data. The goal is to understand…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-11-30 Richard Cole , Tim Roughgarden

Strategic classification studies the design of a classifier robust to the manipulation of input by strategic individuals. However, the existing literature does not consider the effect of competition among individuals as induced by the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Lydia T. Liu , Nikhil Garg , Christian Borgs

In Hotelling's model of spatial competition, a unit mass of voters is distributed in the interval $[0,1]$ (with their location corresponding to their political persuasion), and each of $m$ candidates selects as a strategy his distinct…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-09 Umang Bhaskar , Soumyajit Pyne

Within the framework of Game Theory, contests study decision-making in those situations or conflicts when rewards depend on the relative rank between contenders rather than their absolute performance. By relying on the formalism of Tullock…

Physics and Society · Physics 2023-04-03 A. de Miguel-Arribas , J. Morón-Vidal , L. M. Floría , C. Gracia-Lázaro , L. Hernández , Y. Moreno

This paper introduces alignment games, a new class of zero-sum games modeling strategic interventions where effectiveness depends on alignment with an underlying hidden state. Motivated by operational problems in medical diagnostics,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-08 Pedro Cesar Lopes Gerum , Thomas Lidbetter

According to the proportional allocation mechanism from the network optimization literature, users compete for a divisible resource -- such as bandwidth -- by submitting bids. The mechanism allocates to each user a fraction of the resource…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-02-17 Ioannis Caragiannis , Alexandros A. Voudouris

In a two-player zero-sum graph game the players move a token throughout a graph to produce an infinite path, which determines the winner or payoff of the game. Traditionally, the players alternate turns in moving the token. In {\em bidding…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-12-22 Guy Avni , Ismaël Jecker , Đorđe Žikelić

In this paper, we consider zero-sum repeated games in which the maximizer is restricted to strategies requiring no more than a limited amount of randomness. Particularly, we analyze the maxmin payoff of the maximizer in two models: the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2018-10-11 Mehrdad Valizadeh , Amin Gohari

We consider the complexity of finding a correlated equilibrium of an $n$-player game in a model that allows the algorithm to make queries on players' payoffs at pure strategy profiles. Randomized regret-based dynamics are known to yield an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-22 Sergiu Hart , Noam Nisan

We study a game-theoretic variant of the maximum circulation problem. In a flow allocation game, we are given a directed flow network. Each node is a rational agent and can strategically allocate any incoming flow to the outgoing edges.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-22 Nils Bertschinger , Martin Hoefer , Daniel Schmand

In a combinatorial exchange setting, players place sell (resp. buy) bids on combinations of traded goods. Besides the question of finding an optimal selection of winning bids, the question of how to share the obtained profit is of high…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-30 T. Heller , S. O. Krumke

In this paper, we study sequential auctions with two budget constrained bidders and any number of identical items. All prior results on such auctions consider only two items. We construct a canonical outcome of the auction that is the only…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-09-11 Zhiyi Huang , Nikhil R. Devanur , David Malec

We study the problem of finding robust equilibria in multiplayer concurrent games with mean payoff objectives. A $(k,t)$-robust equilibrium is a strategy profile such that no coalition of size $k$ can improve the payoff of one its member by…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-02-02 Romain Brenguier

The Stackelberg game model, where a leader commits to a strategy and the follower best responds, has found widespread application, particularly to security problems. In the security setting, the goal is for the leader to compute an optimal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-19 Sai Mali Ananthanarayanan , Christian Kroer

Having fixed capacities, homogeneous products and price sensitive customer purchase decision are primary distinguishing characteristics of numerous revenue management systems. Even with two or three rivals, competition is still highly…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-08-08 Niloofar Fadavi

Cr\'emer and McLean [1985] showed that, when buyers' valuations are drawn from a correlated distribution, an auction with full knowledge on the distribution can extract the full social surplus. We study whether this phenomenon persists when…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-06-09 Hu Fu , Nima Haghpanah , Jason Hartline , Robert Kleinberg

Chinese auctions are a combination between a raffle and an auction and are held in practice at charity events or festivals. In a Chinese auction, multiple players compete for several items by buying tickets, which can be used to win the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-09-04 Simina Brânzei , Clara Forero , Kate Larson , Peter Bro Miltersen

We study markets where firms compete for consumer attention by subsidizing costly product inspection. These subsidies do not change product quality, but they alter the order in which consumers search by lowering inspection costs. We…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-29 Salvador Candelas , Nicole Immorlica , Brendan Lucier