The contest entails one prize and n potential bidders. Each bidder receives a signal about the value of the prize and has a signal-dependent probability of participation. All bidders bear a cost of bidding that is an increasing function of their bids. It is shown that the contest organizer...

This paper studies the effects of head starts in innovation contests. We analyze a two- firm winner-takes-all contest in which each firm decides when to stop a privately observed search for innovations (with recall). The firm with a superior innovation at the outset has a head start. The firm...

In multi-round elimination tournaments, players experience "psychological momentum". We re-consider the design of elimination tournament plan, by taking into account of various types of psychological momentum. The results show that if there is negative psychological momentum, either persistent...