Optimal contest design: Tuning the heat

Letina, Igor; Liu, Shuo; Netzer, Nick (2023). Optimal contest design: Tuning the heat. Journal of economic theory, 213, p. 105616. Elsevier 10.1016/j.jet.2023.105616

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We consider the design of contests when the principal can choose both the prize profile and how the prizes are allocated as a function of a possibly noisy signal about the agents' efforts. We provide sufficient conditions that guarantee optimality of a contest. Optimal contests have a minimally competitive prize profile and an intermediate degree of competitiveness in the contest success function. Whenever observation is not too noisy, the optimum can be achieved by an all-pay contest with a cap. When observation is perfect, the optimum can also be achieved by a nested Tullock contest. We relate our results to a recent literature which has asked similar questions but has typically focused on the design of either the prize profile or the contest success function.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Economics

UniBE Contributor:

Letina, Igor

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

0022-0531

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Julia Alexandra Schlosser

Date Deposited:

23 Oct 2023 08:28

Last Modified:

29 Oct 2023 02:26

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.jet.2023.105616

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/187339

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/187339

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