We study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent-seeking contests. Most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost, and find both overbidding relative to the Nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation of...

This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support the main qualitative predictions of the theory. In the auction treatment, where winning...

The impact of the investment in absorptive capacity on transboundary pollution is studied by considering two countries each of them regulating a firm. Firms can invest in original research and in absorptive research to lower their pollution intensity. The absorptive research enables a firm to...

We consider in this paper a duopoly competing in quantities and where�firms can invest in R&D to control their emissions. We distinguish between effort carried out to acquire first-hand knowledge (original R&D)and effort to develop an absorptive capacity to be able to capture part of the...

We develop a three stage game model composed of a regulator and two firms. These firms compete on the same market where they offer the same homogeneous good, and can invest in R&D to lower their emission/output ratio. By means of a tax per-unit of pollution and a subsidy per-unit of R&D level,...

We develop a three stage game model composed of a regulator and two firms. These firms compete on the same market where they offer the same homogeneous good, and can invest in R&D to lower their emission/output ratio. By means of a tax per-unit of pollution and a subsidy per-unit of R&D level,...

Using a two-player Tullock-type contest we show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically equivalent. Strategically equivalent contests generate the same best response functions and, as a result, the same equilibrium efforts. However, strategically equivalent...

We find the sufficient conditions for the existence of multiple equilibria in Tullock-type contests, and show that asymmetric equilibria arise even under symmetric prize and cost structures. We then present existing contests where multiple equilibria exist under reasonably weak conditions.

We analyze a group contest in which n groups compete to win a group-specific public good prize. Group sizes can be different and any player may value the prize differently within and across groups. Players exert costly efforts simultaneously and independently. Only the highest effort (the...