Co-authored Paper by Professors Wang Zhewei and Gao Lei Officially Published in Top Game Theory Journal Games and Economic Behavior
Recently, the co-authored paper Move orders in contests: Equilibria and winning chances by Professor Wang Zhewei, Gao Lei from the School of Economics, Shandong University, and Professor Jingfeng Lu from the National University of Singapore, was officially published in Games and Economic Behavior, an international top journal in the field of game theory.
In the classic Tullock contest, contest accuracy (inversely proportional to random factors in the competitive environment) is represented by the parameter r. Previous literature mainly focuses on sequential games under specific contest accuracy (r=1). The core contribution of this paper is to find a method to comprehensively characterize the equilibrium of sequential games for any level of contest accuracy (r ranges from zero to positive infinity) and any heterogeneity of contestants. This paper and subsequent achievements are expected to significantly deepen the academic understanding of sequential game behavior in different contest environments. For example, in previous studies, in a competitive environment with fixed contest accuracy (r = 1), the leader will choose to preempt the opponent only when the leader is significantly stronger than the follower (preempting the opponent: the leader's effort level is high enough to make the follower completely lose the motivation to make efforts), which means that when the weak player moves first, they will never choose to preempt the opponent in equilibrium. This paper finds that when the weak player moves first, as long as the gap between the strong and weak is not too large, the weak player will still choose to preempt the opponent in equilibrium when the contest accuracy falls into a certain "preemptive interval".
Wang Zhewei is a Professor at the School of Economics, Shandong University, an Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Scholar of Shandong University, and a Young Expert of Taishan Scholar Program in Shandong Province. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Edinburgh, UK in 2010. Since joining Shandong University, he has published papers in authoritative domestic and foreign journals such as Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Mathematical Economics, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and Management World. He has presided over a number of national-level projects and participated in many major national-level (NSFC and NSSFC) projects. He serves as a review expert for NSFC and NSSFC projects. He was selected into the Editorial Board of Core Course Textbooks for the "101 Plan" of the Ministry of Education. He has won honors such as Excellent Postdoctoral Fellow of Shandong Province, Excellent Teacher of Shandong University, and Shandong Provincial Teaching Achievement Award.
Gao Lei is a Teacher at the School of Economics, Shandong University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from Washington University in St. Louis, USA in 2010. Since joining Shandong University, he has published papers in international authoritative journals such as Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economics, and Journal of System Science and Complexity. He has participated in a number of national-level (general and major) fund projects.
Paper link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2025.02.003
