This paper examines the variation in total effort expended by participants when prizes are awarded in a grand contest as opposed to a number of subcontests. When contestants are homogeneous, under a mild and plausible condition (regular contest technology), a grand contest generates more effort...

This paper studies optimal auction design with asymmetric linear financial externalities among bidders. When the matrix Γ that relates biddersʼ payoffs to their payments is nonsingular, the payment-related component in the design objective must equal a unique linear combination of its...