This paper studies an economic contest with two participants, who are overconfident in their own relative abilities. We examine two different sources of overconfidence, overestimation of one's own ability and underestimation of the rival's ability, and compare the behavioral consequences of each...

Group contests are ubiquitous. Some examples include warfare between countries, competition between political parties, team-incentives within firms, group sports, and rent-seeking. In order to succeed, members of the same group have incentives to cooperate with each other by expending individual...

We explore the influence of cognitive ability and judgment on strategic behavior in the beauty contest game (where the Nash equilibrium action is zero). Using the level-k model of bounded rationality, cognitive ability and judgment both predict higher level strategic thinking. However,...