We study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents. We consider four institutional settings: Contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information. We find that an effort-maximizing...

We show that the optimal prize structure of symmetric n-player Tullock tournaments assigns the entire prize pool to the winner, provided that a symmetric pure strategy equilibrium exists. If such an equilibrium fails to exist under the winner-take-all structure, we construct the optimal prize...

We analyze the effects of introducing asymmetric information in an investment game (Berg et al., 1995), in which the division of an economic surplus between a trustor and a trustee is not contractible. Backward induction suggests that rational self-interested players would not voluntarily engage...