We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of equilibria with only two active players in the all-pay auction with complete information and identity-dependent externalities. This condition shows that the generic equilibrium of the standard all-pay auction is robust to the...

In imperfectly discriminating contests the contestants contribute effort to win a prize but the highest contributed effort does not necessarily secure a win. The contest success function (CSF) is the technology that translates an individual’s effort into his or her probability of winning. This...

This paper examines whether and how cheap talk communication can facilitate within-group coordination when two unequal sized groups compete for a prize that is shared equally among members of the winning group, regardless of their (costly) contributions to the group’s success. We find that...

The Hotelling game of pure location allows interpretations in spatial competition, political theory, and professional forecasting. In this paper, the doubly symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium for n ≥ 4 firms is characterized as the solution of a well-behaved boundary value problem. The...

This paper studies a large class of imperfectly discriminating contests, referred to as elastic contests, that induce players to either overbid a standing bid or to abstain from bidding altogether. Many common forms of contest are elastic. In any equilibrium of an elastic contest, there is...

Szidarovszky and Okuguchi (Games and Economic Behavior, 1997) have provided useful conditions for the existence of a unique purestrategy Nash equilibrium in rent-seeking games of complete information. In this paper, we generalize their results to contests with incomplete information. Two...

This paper considers rent-seeking games in which a small percentage change in a player's bid has a large percentage impact on her odds of winning, i.e., on the ratio of her respective probabilities of winning and losing. An example is the Tullock contest with a high R. The analysis provides a...

Any symmetric mixed-strategy equilibrium in a Tullock contest with intermediate values of the decisiveness parameter ("2 R ∞") has countably infinitely many mass points. All probability weight is concentrated on those mass points, which have the zero bid as their sole point of accumulation....

This paper studies coordination in a multi-stage elimination tournament with large monetary incentives and a diversified subject pool drawn from the adult British population. In the tournament, members of an ad hoc team earn money by answering general knowledge questions and then eliminate one...