Matching mechanisms are regarded as an important instrument to bring about Pareto optimal allocations in a public good economy and to cure the underprovision problem associated with private provision of public goods. The desired Pareto optimal interior matching equilibrium, however, emerges only...

When providing public goods through voluntary contributions, a donor may introduce unilateral matching in order to reduce underprovision of the public good and thus inefficiency. By itself, however, matching benefits the donor but harms the recipient. We apply Cornes and Hartley's aggregative...

We provide new experimental evidence which suggests an asymmetric discouragement effect in lottery contests with heterogeneous abilities. Compared to a symmetric contest, subjects invest less effort when facing a stronger opponent, but they invest the same when facing a weaker opponent. Our...

We report results from the first experimental study of round-robin tournaments. In our experiment, we investigate how the prize structure affects the intensity, fair-ness, and dynamic behavior in sequential round-robin tournaments with three players. We compare tournaments with a second prize...

This paper considers endogenous coalition formations and endogenous technology choices in a model of private provision of global public goods. We show that the possibility of future interstate (partial) coordination may hinder the current adoption of better technology by a country outside the...

In this paper we demonstrate how the impure public good model can be converted into a pure public good model with satiation of private consumption, which can be handled more easily, by using a variation of the aggregative game approach as devised by Cornes and Hartley (2007). We point out the...

We study strategic investment decisions in multi-stage contests with heterogeneous players. Our theoretical model of a round-robin rank-order tournament predicts that players conserve resources in a current contest to spend more in the subsequent contest if the degree of heterogeneity in the...

We investigate overlapping contests in multi-divisional organizations in which an individual's effort simultaneously determines the outcome of several contests on different hierarchical levels. We show that individuals in smaller units are advantaged in the grand (organization-wide) contest for...

I examine sequential round-robin tournaments with three and four symmetric players. Each player is matched once with each other player. If the matches are organized as Tullock contests (all-pay auctions), the tournament will be almost fair (highly discriminatory): subject to the position of...

I characterize the optimal accuracy level r of an unbiased Tullock contest between two players with heterogeneous prize valuations. The designer maximizes the winning probability of the strong player or the winner’s expected valuation by choosing a contest with an all-pay auction equilibrium...