Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/127322 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper Series No. 500
Publisher: 
University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
It is well known that the rock-paper-scissors game has no pure saddle point. We show that this holds more generally: A symmetric two-player zero-sum game has a pure saddle point if and only if it is not a generalized rock-paper-scissors game. Moreover, we show that every finite symmetric quasiconcave two-player zero-sum game has a pure saddle point. Further sufficient conditions for existence are provided. We apply our theory to a rich collection of examples by noting that the class of symmetric two-player zero-sum games coincides with the class of relative payoff games associated with symmetric two-player games. This allows us to derive results on the existence of a finite population evolutionary stable strategies.
Subjects: 
Symmetric two-player games
zero-sum games
Rock-Paper-Scissors
single-peakedness
quasiconcavity
JEL: 
C72
C73
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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