rent seeking contests with private values and resale this paper studies rent seeking contests with private values and resale possibilities with a stochastic success function the resulting possible inefficiency creates a motive for aftermarket trade players valuations are determined endogenously when there is an opportunity of resale we characterize symmetric equilibria we assume that the winner has full bargaining power but the results extend to other resale mechanisms we show that resale enhances allocative efficiency ex post at the expense of more social resource waste since players compete more aggressively with resale possibilities

incomplete information and rent dissipation in deterministic contests abstract in a deterministic contest or all pay auction all rents are dissipated when information is complete and contestants are identical as one contestant becomes stronger that is values the prize more total expenditures are known to decrease monotonically thus asymmetry among contestants reduces competition and rent dissipation recently this result has been shown to hold for other non deterministic contest success functions as well thereby suggesting a certain robustness in this paper however the complete information assumption is shown to be crucial i examine a tractable incomplete information model for which the complete information model is a special case with incomplete information regardless of how little total expenditures in a deterministic two player contest increase when one contestant becomes marginally stronger starting from a symmetric contest in fact both contestants expend resources more aggressively with complete information neither of them do so thus there is a discontinuity in the information structure

rent seeking contests with incomplete information we consider rent seeking contests with two players who each have private information about their own cost of effort we consider both discrete and continuous distributions of costs and give results for each case focusing on existence of equilibrium

sent seeking with private values we study a rent seeking contest in which the players valuations of the prize are private information we determinea bayesian equilibrium and give conditions under which theequilibrium exists although players are ex ante symmetric increased possibilities for ex post lopsidedness lead toless aggressive bidding lopsidedness increases as players values become less positively correlated or as the variationin possible values increases we also compare theprivate information contest to a related public informationcontest in which the realizations of values are commonknowledge the contests are equally efficient and players areindifferent between the two but risk averse sellers of theprize are not

revisiting inflation in the euro area allowing for long memory abstract we analyse inflation and inflation differentials in the euro area allowing for long memory and a new type of limiting theory denoted fixed bandwidth our results differ from those based on standard normal asymptotics and the short memory assumption and we also find that the inflation differentials between core and peripheral countries are strongly persistent core economies appear to have less persistent differentials and may be more integrated while peripheral countries with high inflation may find themselves under competitive pressure for a long time

needs based health care funding implications for resource distribution in ontario capitation models have been suggested as an alternative to funding methods based on historical utilization patterns capitation funding distributes esources to regions or programs according to their population adjusted for the age and gender composition and relative need the most commonly used relative needs measure is the standardized mortality ratio smr this paper compares the distribution of resources in ontario implied by a variety of capitation formula another aspect of this research is to design a mechanism that translates the smr into a funding allocation index we specify a non linear model to capture the relationship between current expenditures and the smr while controlling for historical utilization factors in contrast to previous work in which a linear relationship between expenditures and need was assumed our estimates suggest that the relationship may actually be highly non linear this non linearity ncreases transfers to regions of relative need relative to a linear capitation program jel classification i0 h51 on a suggere des modeles de financement per capita des soins de sante pour remplacer les methodes de financement fondees sur les patterns historiques d utilisation cette solution de rechange distribuerait les ressources aux regions et programmes selon la population avec des ajustements pour tenir compte de la structure ges de sexes et de besoins relatifs la mesure la plus commune des besoins relatifs est le taux de mortalite standardise tms ce memoire compare la repartition des ressources en ontario qui decoulerait de l emploi d une variete de formules on tente aussi de construire un mecanisme qui traduise le tms en un indice d allocation des fonds les auteurs construisent un odele non lineaire qui saisit la relation entre tms et epenses courantes tout en normalisant pour tenir compte des facteurs historiques d utilisation contrairement aux resultats des travaux anterieurs qui postulaient une relation lineaire entre epenses et besoins les resultats de cette etude uggerent que cette relation peut etre fortement non lineaire et que cette non linearite tend a ccroitre les transferts aux regions qui ont les besoins les plus grands

team contests with multiple pairwise battles abstract we consider a multi battle team contest in which players from two rival teams form pairwise matches to fight in distinct component battles which are carried out sequentially or partially

are competitors forward looking in strategic interactions field evidence from multistage tournaments abstract this paper investigates whether decision makers are forward looking in dynamic strategic interactions and incorporate variations of continuation values in their choices using data from professional and semi professional basketball tournaments we find that the expected relative strength of a team in future interactions indeed affects behavior in the present the results also show that the response to changes in the continuation value is stronger if the structure of prizes is convex across stages if the players are in a decisive game and if the prevalence of free riding within a team is low

endogenous group formation in experimental contests abstract we experimentally study endogenous alliance formation and contest effort choices in a generic three player contest differences in intrinsic or extrinsic incentives to expend effort cause self selection weakly motivated players have an incentive to enter into an alliance and to free ride on strongly motivated players hence strong players prefer to stand alone self selection has direct consequences for effort in endogenously formed alliances but we also find evidence of an effort stimulating effect if players endogenously form an alliance which is in line with theories of in group favoritism the experimental evidence on self selection is in conformity with a theory analysis of the game

an approximate solution to rent seeking contests with private information abstract we propose an approximate solution to rent seeking contests in which participants have heterogeneous and private valuations the procedure only requires common knowledge about the mean of the distribution of valuations we obtain a closed form expression for an agent s level of investment and subject it to comparative statics analysis we then assess the performance of the model and find that the proposed solution provides a remarkably effective approximation of the optimal solution for a wide range of parameter specifications

would you trust lobbies we consider the regulatory problem to approve or to ban a new product technology in the context of scientific controversy about its detrimental environmental and or health effects we formalize the regulator s decision making process as a tullock contest towards a theory of the rent seeking society texas a m university press texas 1980 the contestants being an industrial lobby representing the economic agents who have developed the new product technology and an environmental lobby representing the economic agents who will be harmed by the product or technology assuming that the industrial lobby has private information about the unfavorable environmental and or health effects but can be held liable for damage ex post we derive the equilibrium properties of the contest in particular we derive conditions under which it is socially preferable for the regulator to decide according to the contest s outcome rather than according to an ex ante cost benefit analysis using his prior beliefs we find that the contest outperforms the ex ante cost benefit analysis only if the risk of judgment proofness is not too high

a tug of war team contest this paper analyzes a tug of war contest between two teams in each round of the tug of war a pair of agents from the opposing teams competes in a private value all pay auction with asymmetric value distributions and effort effectiveness whichever team arrives first at a given lead in terms of battle victories over the opponent wins the tug of war there exists a unique markov perfect equilibrium in bidding strategies which depend on the respective player s valuation and the current state of the tug of war we derive rich comparative statics for this equilibrium by using the fact that the state of the tug of war evolves according to a time homogeneous absorbing markov chain

contests with an unknown number of contestants this paper studies rent seeking contests where the contestants do not know the number of actively competing contestants two models are compared in the first all players are risk neutral in the second all have constant absolute risk aversion if the expected fraction of active contestants is low an increase in the number of potential contestants increases individual rent seeking efforts this effect is in contrast to the complete information case where individual rent seeking efforts decrease in the number of contestants the effect is more likely under risk neutrality but also possible under risk aversion equilibrium rent seeking efforts are lower under risk aversion if and only if the expected fraction of active contestants is low

coping with complexity experimental evidence for narrow bracketing in multi stage contests abstract this paper investigates whether decision makers bracket their choices narrowly to facilitate complex decision problems evidence from a framing variation of rewards in experimental two stage pairwise elimination contests indicates that decision makers neglect the option value of participation in future stages of the contest if the reward frame facilitates the separate consideration of stages but not if the reward frame induces forward looking behavior decision makers account for the option value of participation in future stages of the contest independently of the reward frame however when complex strategic interactions in future stages of the contest are replaced by simple lotteries that facilitate the determination of the option value the results present novel evidence for the prevalence and the determinants of choice bracketing as a means to cope with complexity

contests a comparison of timing and information structures we study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents we consider four institutional settings contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information we find that an effort maximizing designer of the contest prefers the sequential to the simultaneous setting from an ex ante perspective moreover the sequential contest pareto dominates the simultaneous one when the contestants types are sufficiently negatively correlated regarding the information structure the designer ex ante prefers private information while the contestants prefer public information

information sharing in a contest game with group identity abstract in this paper we study a private information contest game with two stages in stage 1 players simultaneously choose whether to announce their group identity and in stage 2 each player simultaneously plays a within group lottery contest and an across group contest players information sharing incentives are analyzed and all symmetric equilibria of the game are fully characterized our results show that 1 full disclosure by both types is always one of the equilibria 2 full concealment by both types can be supported as an equilibrium information strategy when the relative magnitude of high and low valuations is large and when such a relative magnitude is small there is an equilibrium in which the high type randomizes and the low type fully conceals

effort levels in a cournot nash contest with asymmetric information abstract many contests exist where one player does not know his opponent s value of a fixed prize e g unobservable non market preferences for preservation this paper explores how changes in the nature of a one sided information asymmetry affect effort levels in a cournot nash contest the results indicate that the uninformed player s effort is an uncertain input such that his effort is inversely related to risk this reduces his average odds of success comparative static results are driven by the perceived odds of success and risk for the uninformed player and the actual odds of success for the informed player

rent seeking with asymmetric valuations this paper analyzes tullock s rent seeking game with asymmetric valuations for a variable range of the returns to scale parameter a necessary and sufficient condition for a unique pure strategy nash equilibrium is established equilibrium effort and expected profits are determined and subjected to comparative statics analysis increasing the underdog s valuation induces both players to increase their efforts increasing the favorite s valuation increases his effort but decreases the effort of the underdog expected profits increase with a player s valuation but decreases with the valuation of the competitor the impact of the returns to scale parameter is also analyzed

winner pay contests we analyze winner pay contests in which players select bids the winner is determined probabilistically through a contest success function and only the winner must pay her bid we show that a pure strategy nash equilibrium exists and is unique under weak assumptions on the contest success function we determine the nash equilibrium for several examples we also consider how equilibrium bids are influenced by private information about the value of winning the contest

information sharing in private value lottery contest we investigate players incentives to disclose information on their private valuations of the prize ahead of a rent seeking contest information sharing arises in equilibrium if types are concentrated enough whereas sharing information is strictly dominated if types are sufficiently dispersed