This paper studies the effects of a specific affirmative action policy in complete information all-pay auctions when players differ in ability. We call this policy an extra prize. The contest organiser splits the prize of the competition into a main prize and an extra prize. Extra prizes differ...

A firm may induce voters or elected politicians to support a policy it favors by suggesting that it is more likely to invest in a district whose voters or representatives support the policy. In equilibrium, no one vote may be decisive, and the policy may gain strong support though the majority...

Reverse auctions are considered a fast and inexpensive price discovery tool to award procurement contracts and it is often desirable to award contracts to more than one supplier. We propose a new procurement procedure that is based on a reverse auction. Shares are allocated endogenously,...

This paper examines the incentives of a firm to invest in information about the quality of its product and to disclose its findings. If the firm holds back information, it might be detected and fined. We show that optimal monitoring is determined by a trade-off. Stricter enforcement reduces the...

This paper examines the incentives of a firm to invest in information about the quality of its product and to disclose its findings. If the firm holds back information, it might be detected and fined. We show that optimal monitoring is determined by a trade-off. Stricter enforcement reduces the...

Since campaign finance reform is usually motivated by the concern that existing legislation can not effectively prevent campaign contributions to 'buy favors', this paper assumes that contributions influence political decisions. But, given that it is also widely recognized that interest groups...

We examine the incentives of an interest group to provide verifiable policy-relevant information to a political decision-maker and to exert political pressure on her. We show that both lobbying instruments are interdependent. In our view information provision is a risky attempt to affect the...

In models of non-deterministic contest, players exert irreversible effort in order to increase their probability of winning a prize. The most prominent functional form of the win probability in the literature is the so-called logit" contest success function. We provide a simple micro-foundation...