This paper studies the optimal design of R&D contests. A “sponsor” (e.g. the US Department of Defense or the World Health Organization) wants to improve the quality of the winning products. To do so, it partitions its budget between two schemes: an inducement prize and efficiency-enhancing...

This paper investigates the optimal (effort-maximizing) structure of multi-stage sequential-elimination contests with pooling competition in each stage. We allow the contest organizer to design the contest structure in two arms: contest sequence (the number of stages, and the number of remaining...

This paper explores the optimal design of biased contests. A designer imposes an identity-dependent treatment on contestants, which varies the balance of the playing field. A generalized lottery contest typically yields no closed-form equilibrium solutions, which nullifies the usual implicit...

This paper explores the optimal design of biased contests. A designer imposes an identity-dependent treatment on contestants, which varies the balance of the playing field. A generalized lottery contest typically yields no closed-form equilibrium solutions, which nullifies the usual implicit...