We experimentally contrast mathematical versus operational explanations of Tullock lottery contests. We contrast a protocol explaining the contest in terms of probability of winning, with an operational approach that carries out the random component of the contest as an explicit lottery each...

More voters than ever get political news from their friends on social media platforms. Is this bad for democracy? Using context-neutral laboratory experiments, we find that biased (mis)information shared on social networks affects the quality of collective decisions relatively more than does...

We experimentally test the qualitatively different equilibrium predictions of two theoretical models of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets. In such a network, the attacker's objective is to assault at least one target successfully and the defender's objective is to defend...

Prior gender literature has focused on whether men and women differ in their willingness to enter competition. We conduct a laboratory study to examine, instead, gender differences while in competition. We analyze effort choices in a best-of-five probabilistic contest. The longer contest and the...

Contests are well-established mechanisms for encouraging innovation, incentivizing workers, and advancing R&D. A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases performance of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Leveling the...

This commentary complements the article by De Dreu and Gross (2019) from the perspectives of behavioral economics and game theory. It aims to provide a bridge between the psychology / neuroscience research with that of economic research in attack-and-defense by stipulating relevant literature,...

We experimentally explore indefinitely repeated contests. Theory predicts more cooperation, in the form of lower expenditures, in indefinitely repeated contests with a longer expected time horizon, and our data support this prediction, although this result attenuates with contest experience....

Standard theoretical prediction is that rational economic agents participating in rent-seeking contests should engage in socially inefficient behavior by exerting costly efforts. Experimental studies find that the actual efforts of participants are significantly higher than predicted and that...

We study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent-seeking contests. Most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost, and find both overbidding relative to the Nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation of...

Appointing public officials is an important feature of modern democracies. Citizens are periodically asked to select amongst different candidates whom they want to appoint as public officials in central or local governments. There may be a trade-off on the extent to which candidates are seen as...