The Emergence of League and Sub-League Structure in the Population Lotto Game

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Population Lotto Game, a multiplayer resource allocation model that reveals hierarchical league structures in competitive outcomes, with algorithms to find stable Nash equilibria.

Contribution

It presents a new game model allowing resource distribution across a continuum, demonstrating hierarchical league formations and providing algorithms for equilibrium computation.

Findings

Hierarchical league and sub-league structures emerge in the game.

Nash equilibrium can be computed for finite sub-population sizes.

Stable equilibria exist for players with budgets below certain thresholds.

Abstract

In order to understand if and how strategic resource allocation can constrain the structure of pair-wise competition outcomes in competitive human competitions we introduce a new multiplayer resource allocation game, the Population Lotto Game. This new game allows agents to allocate their resources across a continuum of possible specializations. While this game allows non-transitive cycles between players, we show that the Nash equilibrium of the game also forms a hierarchical structure between discrete `leagues' based on their different resource budgets, with potential sub-league structure and/or non-transitive cycles inside individual leagues. We provide an algorithm that can find a particular Nash equilibrium for any finite set of discrete sub-population sizes and budgets. Further, our algorithm finds the unique Nash equilibrium that remains stable for the subset of players with budgets below any threshold.