The name is absent

and asymmetry that is created by this can also reduce future conflict. Win-
ning or losing a particular contest in a series of conflictual situations is known
to change future conflict behavior (Bergman et al. (2003), Beacham (2003)
and Hsu and Wolf (1999)). This may partially be the result of information
about own fighting skills and the fighting experience gained, but it may also
arise from the change in strategic position with respect to future conflict
about rank, territory, access to food, or opportunities to reproduce.

Evidence from biology and political science shows that violent conflict
often does not take place, or, at least, the intensity of a conflict varies sig-
nificantly as a function of the conflicting parties’ actual strengths, previous
experience, and the strategic symmetry or asymmetry of the particular situ-
ation in terms of territorial or other advantages. Parker and Rubenstein
(1981) and Hammerstein (1981) emphasize the role of asymmetry in determ-
ining whether a conflictual situation turns into a resource wasteful or violent
conflict. Different advantages and disadvantages may determine the over-
all asymmetry of a conflictual situation, and counterbalance or add to each
other. Schaub (1995) describes the conflict over food that occurs between
long-tailed macaque females. Differences in strength and in the distances
between the animals and the location of the food govern their behavior. Su-
perior strength or dominance of one contestant can be compensated by a
greater distance she has to the location of the food. Relative strength, to-
gether with the actual payoffs from winning determine contestants’ stakes
at any given stage of a tug-of-war and determine the degree of asymmetry
between the rival players.

We examine how the players’ respective fighting abilities, rewards from
final victory, and the distances in terms of the required battle win differential
to achieve victory interact to determine Markov perfect equilibrium behavior
in the tug-of-war. For notational convenience we concentrate on the asym-
metry in the valuations of the final prize and assume equal fighting ability,
but as will be shown this is equivalent to the more general case with asym-
metric valuations of the prize and asymmetric fighting abilities. We show
that the contest effort that is dissipated in total and over all battle peri-
ods crucially depends on the starting point of the tug-of-war, and, for many
starting points, is negligible, even if the asymmetry in the starting conditions
is very limited. Hence, the multi-battle structure in a tug-of-war reduces the
amount of resources that is dissipated in the contest, compared to a single
all-pay auction, which has been studied by Hillman and Riley (1989) and
Baye, Kovenock and deVries (1993, 1996) for the case of complete informa-

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