We aim at characterizing which kind of functions could be explained (rationalized) as the best reply of payoff-maximizing agents in contests for a fixed prize. We show that the rationalizability strongly differs between Decisive Contests, where the prize is allocated with certainty, and Possibly...

We compare two contest. Decentralized in which there are several independent contests with non overlapping contestants and Centralized in which all contestants fight for a unique prize which is the sum of all prizes in the small contests. We study the relationship between payoffs and efforts...

In this paper we first characterize the class of contest success functions (CSF) that yield contests with dominant strategies. Then we study the optimal contest as a decision problem under uncertainty. We consider the classical criteria of Wald, Laplace, Hurwicz and Savage. We find that the CSF...