This article analyzes rent seeking with multiple additive efforts for each of two players. Impact on rent seeking occurs even when a player exerts only one effort. This contrasts with models of multiplicative efforts with impact on rent seeking only when a player exerts all its available efforts. An analytical solution is developed when the contest intensities are below one, and equal to one for one effort. Then, additional efforts causing interior solutions give players higher expected utilities and lower rent (...) dissipation, which contrasts with earlier findings for multiplicative efforts. Players cut back on the effort with contest intensity equal to one, and exert alternative efforts instead. Accounting for solutions which have to be determined numerically, a Nash equilibrium selection method is provided. For illustration, an example with maximum two efforts for each player is provided. Equilibria are shown where both players choose both efforts, or one player withdraws from its most costly effort. Both players may collectively prefer to exclude one of their efforts, though in equilibrium, they may prefer both efforts. When all contest intensities are equal to one or larger than one, only the one most cost-effective effort is exerted, due to the logic of linear or convex production. Rent dissipation increases in the contest intensity, and is maximum when the players are equally advantaged determined by unit effort cost divided by impact. (shrink)

Axelord’s [(1970), Conflict of Interest, Markham Publishers, Chicago] index of conflict in 2 × 2 games with two pure strategy equilibria has the property that a reduction in the cost of holding out corresponds to an increase in conflict. This article takes the opposite view, arguing that if losing becomes less costly, a player is less likely to gamble to win, which means that conflict will be less frequent. This approach leads to a new power index and a new measure (...) of stubbornness, both anchored in strategic reasoning. The win probability defined as power constitutes an equilibrium refinement which differs from Harsanyi and Selten’s [(1988), A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games, MIT Press, Cambridge] refinement. In contrast, Axelrod’s approach focuses on preferences regarding divergences from imaginary outmost rewards that cannot be obtained jointly. The player who is less powerful in an asymmetric one-shot game becomes more powerful in the repeated game, provided he or she values the future sufficiently more than the opponent. This contrasts with the view that repetition induces cooperation, but conforms with the expectation that a more patient player receives a larger share of the pie. (shrink)