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.

The second part of the thesis focuses on a different stochastic problem of finding the optimal hedging points in a manufacturing flow control system. Our simulation-based method allows solving large scale systems that are considered very difficult to solve by current standards in the literature.