The paper proves that in two-player logit form symmetric contestswith concave success function, commitment to a particular strategydoes not increase a player's payo, while in contests with more thantwo players it does. The paper also provides a contest-like game inwhich commitment does not...

We show that the presence of loss aversion on the part of participantsin a Tullock imperfectly discriminating contest will significantlyreduce the proportion of the rent dissipated in the form of resourcesused up in the competition for that rent...

We investigate the Nash equilibria of asymmetric, winner-take-all, imperfectlydiscriminating contests, focussing on existence, uniqueness and rentdissipation. When the contest success function is determined by a productionfunction with decreasing returns for each contestant, equilibria...