We conduct an experimental analysis of a best-of-three Tullock contest. Intermediate prizes lead to higher efforts, while increasing the role of luck (as opposed to effort) leads to lower efforts. Both intermediate prizes and luck reduce the probability of contest ending in two rounds. The...

We analyze a group contest in which n groups compete to win a group-specific public good prize. Group sizes can be different and any player may value the prize differently within and across groups. Players exert costly efforts simultaneously and independently. Only the highest effort (the...

We generalize the Tullock Contest Success Function to allow for ties by introducing a tie-proneness parameter to account for the degree of the importance of ties in the contest. The probability of a tie reaches a maximum when the contestants provide similar efforts and it is increasing in the...

I propose a simple contest success function which relaxes two features of the Tullock probability function. I show that this contest success function could be used to obtain interesting results and is more tractable than Tullock's function in certain cases. In particular, researchers who are...

This paper proposes the Stochastic-Share Contest, a novel contest format that combines the Winner-Take-All Contest and the Proportional-Prize Contest, with the former nesting the latter two as special cases. Motivated by the experimental contest literature, we include risk aversion and a "joy of...

Contests are often unfair in the sense that outperforming the rival may not be enough to be the winner, because one contestant is favored by the allocation rule, while the other one is handicapped. We consider a discriminatory contest with handicaps and derive the contestants equilibrium...

We study the long-run behavior of an economy where agents who are heterogeneous with respect to risk attitudes can either earn a certain income or enter a risky rent seeking contest. In contrast with standard evolutionary game theory, we distinguish between utility and material payoffs, and...

This paper presents an axiomatic characterization of difference-form group contests, that is, contests fought among groups and where their probability of victory depends on the difference of their effective efforts. This axiomatization rests on the property of Absolute Consistency, stating that...

We explore society's cultural emphasis on guilt (about unethical behavior) as a possible explanation for the strength of the rule of law. Agents rationally choose their ethical type, moral or amoral, and their capacity to experience intrinsic motivation. They also participate in a political...

The robust finding of overbidding in experimental rent-seeking contests (Tullock 1980) fuels a vivid discussion on its causes (Sheremeta 2013). We contribute to this discussion by reporting a series of experiments on rent-seeking contests. We show that contestants hold myopic beliefs and match...