We experimentally investigate the impact of recognizing contributors on public good contributions. We vary recognizing all, highest or lowest contributors. Consistent with previous studies, recognizing all contributors significantly increases contributions relative to the baseline. Recognizing...

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...

This article experimentally studies a two-stage elimination contest and compares its performance with a one-stage contest. Contrary to the theory, the two-stage contest generates higher revenue than the equivalent one-stage contest. There is significant over-dissipation in both stages of the...

Many resource allocation contests have the property that individuals undertake costly actions to appropriate a potentially divisible resource. We design an experiment to compare individuals’ decisions across three resource allocation contests which are isomorphic under risk-neutrality. The...

A contest is a situation in which individuals or groups expend costly resources while competing to win a specific prize. The variety of economic situations that can be described as contests has attracted enormous attention from economic theorists. Despite the extensive theoretical research of...

We experimentally investigate the effect of social identification and information feedback on individual behavior in contests. In all treatments we find significant over-expenditure of effort relative to the standard theoretical predictions. Identifying subjects through photo display decreases...

We experimentally investigate the impact of visibility of contributors and cost of information on public good contributions. First, we vary recognizing all, highest or lowest contributors. Second, we investigate the effect of imposing a cost on viewing contributors. Recognizing all contributors...

We conduct an experimental analysis of a best-of-three contest. Intermediate prizes lead to higher efforts, while increasing the role of luck (as opposed to effort) leads to lower efforts. Both intermediate prizes and luck reduce the probability of contest ending in two rounds. The patterns of...

This laboratory experiment studies two-stage contests between political parties. In the first stage, parties run their primaries and in the second stage the winners of the primaries compete in the general election. The resource expenditures in the first stage by the winning candidates are...

This paper examines theory and behavior in a two-player game of siege, sequential attack and defense. The attacker’s objective is to successfully win at least one battle while the defender’s objective is to win every battle. Theoretically, the defender either folds immediately or, if his...