I study sequential contests where the efforts of earlier players may be disclosed to later players by nature or by design. The model has a range of applications, including rent seeking, R&D, oligopoly, public goods provision, and tragedy of the commons. I show that information about other...

A tournament is a simultaneous n-player game that is built on a two-player game g. We generalize Arad and Rubinstein's model assuming that every player meets each of his opponents twice to play a (possibly) asymmetric game g in alternating roles (using sports terminology, once "at home" and once...

Morgan (Public Choice, 116:1-18, 2003) finds that the aggregate effort is greater in sequential than in simultaneous lottery contests. We show that Morgan's result is incorrect due to a slip in a proof, and that the aggregate effort is greater in sequential contests only if contestants are...

We introduce a general class of simplicity standards that vary the foresight abilities required of agents in extensive-form games. Rather than planning for the entire future of a game, agents are presumed to be able to plan only for those histories they view as simple from their current...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to compare the fairness and intensity of round-robin tournaments with three symmetric players, a single prize, and two alternative match formats. Matches are either organized as lottery contests or all-pay auctions. Whereas we confirm the theoretical prediction...

We consider multi-stage elimination contests, where agents efforts at different stages generate some output for the organizers. Depending on the output function we characterize the optimal prize structure of the tournament and show that it is almost efficient. We have found that in some cases...

We consider contestants who must choose exactly one contest, out of several, to participate in. We show that when the contest technology is of a certain type, or when the number of contestants is large, a self-allocation equilibrium, i.e., one where no contestant would wish to change his choice...

We examine the fairness and intensity of sequential round-robin tournaments with multiple prizes. With three symmetric players and two prizes, the tournament is completely fair if and only if the second prize is valued half of the first prize, regardless of whether matches are organized as...

We examine the fairness and intensity of sequential round-robin tournaments with multiple prizes. With three symmetric players and two prizes, the tournament is completely fair if and only if the second prize is valued half of the first prize, regardless of whether matches are organized as...

I examine sequential round-robin tournaments with three and four symmetric players. Each player is matched once with each other player. If the matches are organized as Tullock contests (all-pay auctions), the tournament will be almost fair (highly discriminatory): subject to the position of...