IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mpi/wpaper/tax-mpg-rps-2020-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Winner's Effort Maximization in Large Contests

Author

Listed:
  • Stefano Barbieri
  • Marco Serena

Abstract

We investigate the temporal structure that maximizes the winner's effort in large homogeneous contests, thus extending Hinnosaar (2019)'s analysis of total effort. We find that the winner's effort ranges from a lower bound of 0 to an upper bound of one third of the value of the prize, depending on the temporal structure; the upper (lower) bound is reached with an infinite number of players playing sequentially (simultaneously) in the first periods (period). This is in line with Hinnosaar's results for total effort. Nevertheless, when compare the speed of convergence of different temporal structures to the upper bound for the winner's effort, we prove the suboptimality of the fully sequential temporal structure, which is dominated by an initial number of fully sequential moves and a greater number of fully simultaneous moves in the very last period. This is in contrast with Hinnosaar's results for total effort.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefano Barbieri & Marco Serena, 2020. "Winner's Effort Maximization in Large Contests," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2020-13, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2020-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tax.mpg.de/RePEc/mpi/wpaper/TAX-MPG-RPS-2020-13.pdf
    File Function: Full text (original version)
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olszewski, Wojciech & Siegel, Ron, 2020. "Performance-maximizing large contests," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(1), January.
    2. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 2008. "Rigging the lobbying process: An application of the all-pay auction," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Kai A. Konrad & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, pages 331-336, Springer.
    3. Jorge Lemus & Guillermo Marshall, 2021. "Dynamic Tournament Design: Evidence from Prediction Contests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(2), pages 383-420.
    4. Hinnosaar, Toomas, 2024. "Optimal sequential contests," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    5. Glazer, Amihai & Hassin, Refael, 2000. "Sequential Rent Seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(3-4), pages 219-228, March.
    6. Toomas Hinnosaar, 2019. "Contest Architecture with Public Disclosures," Papers 1905.11004, arXiv.org, revised May 2019.
    7. Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2017. "Biased contests for symmetric players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 116-144.
    8. Hao Jia, 2008. "A stochastic derivation of the ratio form of contest success functions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 125-130, June.
    9. Bodoh-Creed, Aaron L. & Hickman, Brent R., 2018. "College assignment as a large contest," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 88-126.
    10. Shanglyu Deng & Hanming Fang & Qiang Fu & Zenan Wu, 2020. "Confidence Management in Tournaments," NBER Working Papers 27186, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Deng, Shanglyu & Wang, Xiruo & Wu, Zenan, 2018. "Incentives in lottery contests with draws," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 1-5.
    12. Olszewski, Wojciech & Siegel, Ron, 2019. "Bid caps in large contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 101-112.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hideo Konishi & Nicolas Sahuguet & Benoît S. Y. Crutzen, 2024. "Allocation rules of indivisible prizes in team contests," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 78(1), pages 69-100, August.
    2. Wasser, Cédric & Zhang, Mengxi, 2023. "Differential treatment and the winner's effort in contests with incomplete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 90-111.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    2. Shanglyu Deng & Hanming Fang & Qiang Fu & Zenan Wu, 2023. "Information Favoritism and Scoring Bias in Contests," PIER Working Paper Archive 23-002, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    3. René Kirkegaard, 2020. "Microfounded Contest Design," Working Papers 2003, University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance.
    4. Barbieri, Stefano & Serena, Marco, 2022. "Biasing dynamic contests between ex-ante symmetric players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 1-30.
    5. Serena, Marco, 2017. "Quality contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 15-25.
    6. Barbieri, Stefano & Serena, Marco, 2024. "Winner's effort in multi-battle team contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 526-556.
    7. Kawamori, Tomohiko, 2023. "Complete-rent-dissipation contest design," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    8. Ratul Lahkar & Saptarshi Mukherjee, 2022. "Optimal Large Population Tullock Contests," Working Papers 82, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    9. Fu, Qiang & Wu, Zenan, 2020. "On the optimal design of biased contests," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(4), November.
    10. Hinnosaar, Toomas, 2024. "Optimal sequential contests," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(1), January.
    11. Franke, Jörg & Leininger, Wolfgang & Wasser, Cédric, 2018. "Optimal favoritism in all-pay auctions and lottery contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 22-37.
    12. Ta, Chi L., 2024. "Do conservation contests work? An analysis of a large-scale energy competitive rebate program," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    13. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    14. Deng, Shanglyu & Fu, Qiang & Wu, Zenan & Zhu, Yuxuan, 2024. "Contests with sequential entry and incomplete information," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(2), May.
    15. Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Szech, Nora, 2023. "Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    16. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2012. "A Nested Contest: Tullock Meets the All-pay Auction," CESifo Working Paper Series 3976, CESifo.
    17. Leppälä, Samuli, 2021. "A partially exclusive rent-seeking contest," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 60-75.
    18. Mikhail Drugov & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2019. "The shape of luck and competition in tournaments," Working Papers w0251, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
    19. Goel, Sumit & Goyal, Amit, 2023. "Optimal tie-breaking rules," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    20. Dmitry Ryvkin, 2022. "To Fight or to Give Up? Dynamic Contests with a Deadline," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 8144-8165, November.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2020-13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Hans Mueller (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mptaxde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.