Leaders compensate supporters not just for performing their duties but also in order to preempt an overthrow by the same supporters. We show how succession rules affect the power of leaders relative to supporters as well as the resources expended on possible succession struggles. We compare two...

Exporters’ performance in a particular market may affect their future exports to the rest of the world. Importers may base their future transaction decisions upon the information revealed by exporters’ past performance in other countries. Similarly, exporters acquire valuable information on...

The negotiations on trade in services at the WTO have so far produced little liberalization beyond levels unilaterally undertaken by countries. One reason is the neglect of the traditional negotiating principle of reciprocity. In particular, there has been a failure to exploit the scope built...

As each new round of multilateral trade negotiations approaches, there is a demand for a negotiating rule that would give credit for autonomous liberalization. This Paper shows that the desirability and feasibility of such a rule depends on when it is instituted. A credit rule established at the...

We study an all-pay contest with multiple identical prizes ("lifeboat seats"). Prizes are partitioned into subsets of prizes ("lifeboats"). Players play a two-stage game. First, each player chooses an element of the partition ("a lifeboat"). Then each player competes for a prize in the subset...

Contestants have to choose whether to initiate a contest or war, or whether to remain peaceful for another period. We find that agents wait and initiate the contest once their rival is sufficiently weak to be an easy target.

We consider the properties of perfectly discriminating contests in which players' abilities are stochastic, but become common knowledge before efforts are expended. Players whose expected ability is lower than that of their rivals may still earn a positive expected payoff from participating in...

Why is there delay in contests? In this Paper we follow and extend the line of reasoning of Carl von Clausewitz to explain delay. For a given contest technology, delay may occur if there is an asymmetry between defense and attack, if the expected change in relative strengths is moderate, and if...

In many situations the individuals who can generate some output must enter a contest for appropriating this output. This Paper analyses the investment incentives of such agents and the role of incumbency advantages in the contest. Depending on the advantages, an increase in the productivity of...

We study how norms can solve distributional conflict inside a clan and the efficient coordination of collective action in a conflict with an external enemy. We characterize a fully non-cooperative equilibrium in a finite game in which a self-enforcing norm coordinates the members on efficient...