Contests With Multi-Tasking

The standard contest model in which participants compete in a single dimension is well understood and documented. Multi-dimension extensions are possible but are liable to increase the complexity of the contest structure, mitigating one of its main advantages: simplicity. In this paper we propose an extension in which competition ensues in several dimensions and a competitor that wins a certain number of these is awarded a prize. The amount of information needed to run the contest is hence limited to the number of dimensions won by each player. We look at the design of this contest from the point of view of maximizing effort in the contest (per dimension and totally), and show that there will be a tendency to run small contests with few dimensions. The standard Tullock model and its results are encompassed by our framework.

[1]  E. Lazear,et al.  Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts , 1979, Journal of Political Economy.

[2]  R. Tollison,et al.  Toward a theory of the rent-seeking society , 1982 .

[3]  Committees and rent-seeking effort , 1984 .

[4]  J. Vickers,et al.  Perfect Equilibrium in a Model of a Race , 1985 .

[5]  Avinash Dixit,et al.  Strategic Behavior in Contests , 1987 .

[6]  J. Vickers,et al.  Racing with Uncertainty , 1987 .

[7]  R. Michaels.  The design of rent-seeking competitions , 1988 .

[8]  G. Tullock.  Future Directions for Rent-Seeking Research , 1988 .

[9]  R. Tollison,et al.  The Political economy of rent-seeking , 1988 .

[10]  J. Snyder.  Election Goals and the Allocation of Campaign Resources , 1989 .

[11]  S. Skaperdas.  Cooperation, Conflict, and Power in the Absence of Property Rights , 1991 .

[12]  Paul R. Milgrom,et al.  Multitask Principal–Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design , 1991 .

[13]  J. Shogren,et al.  Strategic Behavior in Contests: Comment , 1992 .

[14]  Wolfgang Leininger,et al.  More efficient rent-seeking — A Münchhausen solution , 1993 .

[15]  J. Vickers,et al.  A Model of the Evolution of Duopoly: Does the Asymmetry between Firms Tend to Increase or Decrease? , 1993 .

[16]  S. Nitzan.  Modelling rent-seeking contests , 1994 .

[17]  Bernard Grofman,et al.  Modeling Negative Campaigning , 1995, American Political Science Review.

[18]  S. Skaperdas.  Contest success functions , 1996 .

[19]  Ian L. Gale,et al.  Rent dissipation when rent seekers are budget constrained , 1997 .

[20]  Ian L. Gale,et al.  Caps on Political Lobbying , 1998 .

[21]  Derek J. Clark,et al.  Competition over More Than One Prize , 1998 .

[22]  Kai A. Konrad,et al.  Orchestrating Rent Seeking Contests , 1999 .

[23]  B. Moldovanu,et al.  The Optimal Allocation of Prizes in Contests , 2001 .

[24]  J. Atsu Amegashie,et al.  The design of rent-seeking competitions: Committees, preliminary and final contests , 1999 .

[25]  Amy Farmer,et al.  Legal expenditure as a rent-seeking game , 1999 .

[26]  S. Nitzan,et al.  Strategic Restraint in Contests , 2000, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[27]  Dan Kovenock,et al.  Comparative Analysis of Litigation Systems: An Auction-Theoretic Approach , 2000, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[28]  Derek J. Clark,et al.  Allocation efficiency in a competitive bribery game , 2000 .

[29]  L. Schoonbeek,et al.  Efficient rent-seeking, chronicle of an intellectual quagmire , 2001 .

[30]  G. Tullock.  Efficient Rent Seeking , 2001 .

[31]  Committees and Rent-Seeking Effort under Probabilistic Voting , 2002 .

[32]  M. Kräkel.  U-type versus J-type tournaments as alternative solutions to the unverifiability problem , 2003 .

[33]  Isabelle Brose,et al.  Multi-task rank order tournaments , 2004 .

[34]  Isabelle Brose,et al.  A theoretical framework for incentives in the public sector , 2004 .

[35]  Isabelle Brose,et al.  Multitask Rank Order Tournaments: Economics Bulletin, vol. 10 (10), pp. 1-10 , 2004 .

[36]  M. Kräkel.  Tournaments versus Piece Rates under Limited Liability , 2004 .

[37]  Dan Kovenock,et al.  Equilibrium and efficiency in the tug-of-war , 2019 .

[38]  Shmuel Nitzan,et al.  The Politics of Randomness , 2002, Soc. Choice Welf..

[39]  Tilman Klumpp,et al.  Primaries and the New Hampshire Effect , 2006 .

[40]  Benny Moldovanu,et al.  Competing auctions with endogenous quantities , 2008, J. Econ. Theory.