Asymmetric majority pillage games

Authors

Manfred Kerber, School of Computer Science, University of BirminghamFollow
Colin Rowat, Department of Economics, University of BirminghamFollow
Naoki Yoshihara, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, AmherstFollow

Working Paper Number

2019-24

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

This paper studies pillage games (Jordan in J Econ Theory 131.1:26-44, 2006, “Pillage and property”), which are well suited to modelling unstructured power contests. To enable empirical test of pillage games’ predictions, it relaxes a symmetry assumption that agents’ intrinsic contributions to a coalition’s power is identical. In the three-agent game studied: (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 offer better empirical tests of pillage game theory.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/15848119

License

UMass Amherst Open Access Policy

Recommended Citation

Kerber, Manfred; Rowat, Colin; and Yoshihara, Naoki, "Asymmetric majority pillage games" (2019). UMass Amherst Economics Working Papers. 281.
https://doi.org/10.7275/15848119