American Economic Journal:
Microeconomics
ISSN 1945-7669 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7685 (Online)
Opportunity Hunters: A Model of Competitive Sequential Inspections
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
(pp. 228–67)
Abstract
We introduce a new type of games, called "opportunity-hunting games," in which two players compete to discover an uncertain event ("opportunity") that occurs at an unobserved and random point in time. Players can inspect whether the event has already occurred again and again, but each inspection is costly. Varying the parameters of the model spans the range from games where competition between the players to be the first to identify the opportunity is the dominant force, to games in which free riding on the other player's effort is the dominant force. We characterize the game's unique symmetric Markov perfect equilibrium.Citation
Eilat, Ran, Zvika Neeman, and Eilon Solan. 2026. "Opportunity Hunters: A Model of Competitive Sequential Inspections." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 18 (2): 228–67. DOI: 10.1257/mic.20240245Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C72 Noncooperative Games
- C73 Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games; Repeated Games