IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trf/wpaper/100.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contractual Incentive Provision and Commitment in Rent-Seeking Contests

Author

Listed:
  • Gürtler, Oliver

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a symmetric rent-seeking contest, where employees lobby for a governmental contract on behalf of firms. The only verifiable information is which firm is assigned the contract. We derive the optimal wage contracts of the employees and analyze, whether commitment by determining the wage contract prior to the competitor is profitable. This is indeed the case, i.e. firms prefer to move first in the wage-setting subgame. This complements previous work on rent-seeking contests emphasizing that commitment via rent-seeking expenditures is unprofitable in symmetric contests.

Suggested Citation

  • Gürtler, Oliver, 2006. "Contractual Incentive Provision and Commitment in Rent-Seeking Contests," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 100, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    • Handle: RePEc:trf:wpaper:100
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/13451/1/100.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kai Konrad & Wolfgang Leininger, 2007. "The generalized Stackelberg equilibrium of the all-pay auction with complete information," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 11(2), pages 165-174, September.
    2. P.-J. Jost & M. Kräkel, 2005. "Preemptive behavior in sequential-move tournaments with heterogeneous agents," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 245-252, November.
    3. Epstein, Gil S & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2002. "Stakes and Welfare in Rent-Seeking Contests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 112(1-2), pages 137-142, July.
    4. Avinash Dixit, 2008. "Strategic Behavior in Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 431-438, Springer.
    5. William E. Stein & Amnon Rapoport, 2004. "Asymmetric Two-Stage Group Rent-Seeking: Comparison of Two Contest Structures," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 118(1_2), pages 151-167, January.
    6. Shmuel Nitzan, 2008. "Collective Rent Dissipation," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 309-321, Springer.
    7. Mathias Dewatripont, 1988. "Commitment Through Renegotiation-Proof Contracts with Third Parties," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(3), pages 377-390.
    8. Lambert Schoonbeek, 2002. "A delegated agent in a winner-takes-all contest," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 21-23.
    9. David A. Malueg & Andrew J. Yates, 2004. "Sent Seeking With Private Values," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 119(1_2), pages 161-178, April.
    10. Kai A. Konrad, 2004. "Bidding in hierarchies," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 547-554, Springer.
    11. Lee, Sanghack & Hyeong Kang, J., 1998. "Collective contests with externalities," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 727-738, November.
    12. Epstein, Gil S. & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2004. "Strategic restraint in contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 201-210, February.
    13. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    14. Kyung Hwan Baik, 2004. "Two-Player Asymmetric Contests with Ratio-Form Contest Success Functions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(4), pages 679-689, October.
    15. Gurtler, Oliver, 2005. "Collective contests with externalities: corrigendum," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 533-536, June.
    16. Holger M. Müller & Karl Wärneryd, 2001. "Inside versus outside ownership: a political theory of the firm," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Kai A. Konrad & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, pages 679-693, Springer.
    17. Schoonbeek, Lambert, 2004. "Delegation in a group-contest," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 263-272, March.
    18. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    19. Katz, Eliakim & Nitzan, Shmuel & Rosenberg, Jacob, 1990. "Rent-Seeking for Pure Public Goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 49-60, April.
    20. Hwan Baik, Kyung & Lee, Sanghack, 1997. "Collective rent seeking with endogenous group sizes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 121-130, February.
    21. Steven D. Sklivas, 1987. "The Strategic Choice of Managerial Incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(3), pages 452-458, Autumn.
    22. Kaoru Ueda, 2002. "Oligopolization in collective rent-seeking," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 19(3), pages 613-626.
    23. Hongbin Cai & Walter Cont, 2004. "Agency Problems and Commitment in Delegated Bargaining," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(4), pages 703-729, December.
    24. Oliver Gurtler & Matthias Krakel, 2003. "Who is declared dead lives longer," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(15), pages 995-997.
    25. Davis, Douglas D & Reilly, Robert J, 1999. "Rent-Seeking with Non-identical Sharing Rules: An Equilibrium Rescued," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 100(1-2), pages 31-38, July.
    26. Morgan, John, 2003. "Sequential Contests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 1-18, July.
    27. Baye, Michael R. & Hoppe, Heidrun C., 2003. "The strategic equivalence of rent-seeking, innovation, and patent-race games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 217-226, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Kyung Hwan Baik & Jong Hwa Lee, 2013. "Endogenous Timing In Contests With Delegation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 2044-2055, October.
    2. Kyung Hwan Baik & Dongryul Lee, 2012. "Do Rent‐Seeking Groups Announce Their Sharing Rules?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(2), pages 348-363, April.
    3. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    4. Pau Balart & Sabine Flamand & Oliver Gürtler & Orestis Troumpounis, 2018. "Sequential choice of sharing rules in collective contests," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 703-724, October.
    5. Dhritiman Gupta, 2020. "Prize sharing rules in collective contests: When does group size matter?," Discussion Papers 20-04, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
    6. Dhritiman Gupta, 2020. "Prize Sharing Rules in Collective Contests: Towards Strategic Foundations," Discussion Papers 20-01, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
    7. Kyung Hwan Baik, 2007. "Equilibrium Contingent Compensation in Contests with Delegation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(4), pages 986-1002, April.
    8. Dmitry Ryvkin, 2007. "Tullock contests of weakly heterogeneous players," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 49-64, July.
    9. Pau Balart & Sabine Flamand & Orestis Troumpounis, 2014. "Strategic choice of sharing rules in collective contests," Working Papers 64402108, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    10. Pau Balart & Sabine Flamand & Orestis Troumpounis, 2016. "Strategic choice of sharing rules in collective contests," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(2), pages 239-262, February.
    11. Gürtler, Oliver, 2005. "Rent seeking in sequential group contests," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 47, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    12. O Gurtler, 2006. "On the Welfare Effect of an Equivalent Tariff and Quota," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, March.
    13. Ke, Changxia & Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2013. "Brothers in arms – An experiment on the alliance puzzle," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 61-76.
    14. Stefan Brandauer & Florian Englmaier, 2009. "A model of strategic delegation in contests between groups," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 13(3), pages 205-232, September.
    15. Jay Pil Choi & Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Jaesoo Kim, 2016. "Group Contests with Internal Conflict and Power Asymmetry," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 118(4), pages 816-840, October.
    16. Malueg, David A. & Yates, Andrew J., 2005. "Equilibria and comparative statics in two-player contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 738-752, September.
    17. Konrad, Kai A., 2004. "Bidding in hierarchies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1301-1308, December.
    18. Pierre Fauvet & Sébastien Rouillon, 2016. "Would you trust lobbies?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 167(3), pages 201-219, June.
    19. Konishi, Hideo & Pan, Chen-Yu, 2021. "Endogenous alliances in survival contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 337-358.
    20. Bhattacharya, Puja & Rampal, Jeevant, 2024. "Contests within and between groups: Theory and experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 467-492.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Contest; First-Mover Advantage; Commitment; Wage Contract;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    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:trf:wpaper:100. 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: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.