We consider a general class of imperfectly discriminating contests with privately informed players. We show that findings by Athey (2001) imply the existence of a Bayesian Nash equilibrium in monotone pure strategies.

We study the sorting of contestants across Tullock contests, and the allocation of a prize budget across these contests. Our benchmark result is that total effort is maximized by a unique grand contest and contestant exclusions decrease total effort. We consider two extensions of our benchmark...

We use a Tullock-type contest to show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically equivalent. Strategically equivalent contests generate the same best response functions and, as a result, the same efforts. Two strategically equivalent contests, however, may yield...

This paper analyzes incumbency contests in a large population setting. Incumbents repeatedly face different challengers, holding on to their positions until defeated in a contest. Defeated incumbents turn into challengers until they win a contest against an incumbent, thereby regaining an...

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 consider a best-of-three Tullock contest between two ex-ante identical players. An effort-maximizing designer commits to a vector of player-specific biases (advantages or disadvantages). In our benchmark model the designer chooses victory-dependent biases (i.e., the biases depend on the...

In a multi-project contract environment with a single agent who is subject to limited liability, the optimality of performance bundling across all projects is well established: The agent should be rewarded only if all projects are successful. In this paper, we study performance bundling across...

We study competitive behavior in all-pay Tullock (1980) contests with identity-dependent externalities (IDEs) governed by a fixed network. First, we introduce a model of network contest games, in which the prize generates an externality---which may be positive or negative---that impacts each...

We examine a rent-seeking contest by teams, where team members can sabotage their teammates. In this setting, the effective effort (the effort level discounted by the sabotaged level) determines a team's winning probability and the shares of the winning prize. Thus, coordinating the effective...

We use a Tullock-type contest model to show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically and revenue equivalent to each other. We consider a two-player contest, where outcome-contingent payoffs are linear functions of prizes, own effort, and the effort of the rival....