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....

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...

We study experimentally the effects of sorting in contests between groups of heterogeneous players whose within-group efforts are perfect substitutes. The theory predicts that higher aggregate effort will be reached when variation in ability between groups is lower, i.e., by a more balanced...

Individuals belonging to a social group make judgments about their relative standing within the group as well as about the relative standing of their group among other groups. On average, individuals exhibit overconfidence bias in both types of judgments in a variety of settings. We hypothesize,...

We prove the existence of monotone pure strategy Bayesian equilibria in group contests under individual-level and group-level private information. For the latter type, we develop a novel approach reducing group contests to contests between individuals with multi-dimensional types, with...

Contests between groups of workers are often used to create incentives in organizations. Managers can sort workers into groups in various ways in order to maximize total output. We explore how the optimal sorting of workers by ability in such environments depends on the degree of effort...

Overconfidence in one's relative performance within a group is a wide-spread phenomenon. Similar to individual (or within-group) overconfidence, it was also shown that individuals are, on average, overconfident about the performance of their group relative to other groups. We hypothesize that...

We prove the existence of monotone pure strategy Bayesian equilibria in two types of contests between groups under incomplete information: (i) individual-level private information group contests, where each player only knows her own ability, and (ii) group-level private information group...

In many contest situations, such as R&D competition and rent seeking, participants’ costs are private information. We report the results of an experimental study of bidding in contests under different information and symmetry conditions about players’ costs of effort. The theory predicts...