Mediated Contests and Strategic Foundations for Contest Success Functions

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the foundations of arbitrary contest success functions (CSFs) in two distinct types of contests – unmediated and mediated contests. In an unmediated contest, CSFs arise as the (interim) players’ equilibrium beliefs of a two-stage game – the gun-butter game – in which players choose an activity (appropriative vs. productive) in the first stage, and apply effort to their activity in the second stage. In this view a CSF is rationalizable if a contest is induced on the equilibrium path of the gun-butter game. In the second approach, a CSF is the result of the optimal design of an administrator. Here, the designer seeks to maximize his utility by implementing a probability distribution on the set of contestants. However, he is curbed by a disutility term which represents the underlying institutional constraints or the designer’s preferences. Both approaches provide foundations for arbitrary CSFs with no restrictions on the number of contestants.

Keywords: Induced contests; Gun-butter game; Control costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth
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