I present a two-player nested contest which is a convex combination of two widely studied contests: the Tullock (lottery) contest and the all-pay auction. A Nash equilibrium exists for all parameters of the nested contest. If and only if the contest is sufficiently asymmetric, then there is an...

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...

In many real-world contests (political elections / lobbying for public projects), contestants try to engage supporters (unemployed youth / local residents) to fight for them. Such contests have the following features: a significant part of a contestant's supporter compensation is contingent upon...

This paper studies a large class of imperfectly discriminating contests, referred to as elastic contests, that induce players to either overbid a standing bid or to abstain from bidding altogether. Many common forms of contest are elastic. In any equilibrium of an elastic contest, there is...

This article describes a large number of contestants with high and low talent who individually decide to enter a contest or take their heterogeneous outside options. We derive a critical condition for which only high types, only low types, or both types participate in the contest. If a contest...

We compare two contest. Decentralized in which there are several independent contests with non overlapping contestants and Centralized in which all contestants fight for a unique prize which is the sum of all prizes in the small contests. We study the relationship between payoffs and efforts...

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases performance of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Leveling the playing field by favoring weaker contestants through bid-caps and favorable tie-breaking rules can reduce the...

Quality and quantity are very common features of production processes. People care about these two features and they tend to be connected. I consider a contest in which the quantity and quality of output are rewarded. The output in the quality contest plays a dual role. It counts in the quality...

We investigate optimal favoritism using identity-contingent prizes in a two-player Tullock model. Besides the usual balance effect, prize allocation has an extra efficiency effect: One additional unit of prize tends to induce more effort, if it is used as the winning prize for the stronger...

I characterize the optimal accuracy level r of an unbiased Tullock contest between two players with heterogeneous prize valuations. The designer maximizes the winning probability of the strong player or the winner’s expected valuation by choosing a contest with an all-pay auction equilibrium...