A ``fractal'' solution to the chopstick auction (Q2677727)

It is known that for the first-price chopstick auction, \textit{B. Szentes} and \textit{R. W. Rosenthal} [Games Econ. Behav. 44, No. 1, 114--133 (2003; Zbl 1057.91035)] constructed a doubly symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium, referred to as the Szentes-Rosenthal equilibrium (SRE), in which bidders randomize according to a uniform distribution over the surface of a tetrahedron. In this paper the author construct a novel equilibrium referred to as the self-similar equilibrium (SSE) in the chopstick auction. In contrast to the existing solution, the identified equilibrium strategy allows a simple and intuitive characterization. Moreover, its best-response set has the same Hausdorff dimension as its support, which may be seen as a robustness property. It is proven (Proposition 2) that in the simultaneous chopstick auction, the set of pure best responses to \(\mu^{SSE}\) has Hausdorff dimension two. The analysis also reveals some new links to the literature on Blotto games. A proof of the equilibrium property is provided in Section 4. Section 5 deals with the dimension of the best-response set.