Conflict games with payoff uncertainty

Abstract

Stag hunt and chicken games are canonical representations of two kinds of strategic interactions. In stag hunt, aggression feeds on itself, and mutual fear escalates into conflict. Chicken is a model of preemption and deterrence. With complete information, these games have multiple Nash equilbria. Using standard arguments from the Industrial Organization literature, we find sufficient conditions under which payoff uncertainty generates a unique equilibrium. These conditions encompass information structures ranging from independent types (as in our previous work) to highly correlated types (as in global games).