[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/bergec/2005_009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Outsourcing in Contests

Author

Listed:
Abstract
We study ex post outsourcing of production in an imperfectly discriminating contest, interpreted here as a research tournament or a procurement contest for being awarded some production contract. We find that the possibility of outsourcing increases competition between the contestants, leading to higher total contest effort, unless there are very few contestants and/or the ex-post bargaining strength of the contest winner is sufficiently low. However, even in the case of two contestants, outsourcing reduces the procurement costs of inducing a given level of effort if the contest organizer can collect entry fees. With respect to contest design, this suggests that outsourcing should generally be allowed if the objective is to induce stronger competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Meland, Frode & Straume, Odd Rune, 2005. "Outsourcing in Contests," Working Papers in Economics 09/05, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:bergec:2005_009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ekstern.filer.uib.no/svf/2005/No.%2009-05.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morton I. Kamien & Lode Li & Dov Samet, 1989. "Bertrand Competition with Subcontracting," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(4), pages 553-567, Winter.
    2. Buehler, Stefan & Haucap, Justus, 2006. "Strategic outsourcing revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 325-338, November.
    3. Konrad, Kai A., 2000. "Trade contests," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 317-334, August.
    4. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 2008. "Rigging the lobbying process: An application of the all-pay auction," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Kai A. Konrad & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, pages 331-336, Springer.
    5. Mark Gradstein & Kai A. Konrad, 1999. "Orchestrating Rent Seeking Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 571-580, Springer.
    6. Chen, Yongmin & Ishikawa, Jota & Yu, Zhihao, 2004. "Trade liberalization and strategic outsourcing," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 419-436, July.
    7. Amegashie, J Atsu, 1999. "The Design of Rent-Seeking Competitions: Committees, Preliminary and Final Contests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 99(1-2), pages 63-76, April.
    8. Konrad, Kai A., 2006. "Silent interests and all-pay auctions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 701-713, July.
    9. Amegashie, J Atsu, 2000. "Some Results on Rent-Seeking Contests with Shortlisting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 105(3-4), pages 245-253, December.
    10. Lommerud, Kjell Erik & Meland, Frode & Straume, Odd Rune, 2009. "Can deunionization lead to international outsourcing?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 109-119, February.
    11. Szymanski, Stefan & Valletti, Tommaso, 2004. "First and Second Prizes in Imperfectly Discriminating Contests," CEPR Discussion Papers 4484, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Arye L. Hillman & John G. Riley, 1989. "Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 17-39, March.
    13. Yeon-Koo Che & Ian Gale, 2003. "Optimal Design of Research Contests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 646-671, June.
    14. Richard L. Fullerton & R. Preston McAfee, 1999. "Auctioning Entry into Tournaments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 573-605, June.
    15. Taylor, Curtis R, 1995. "Digging for Golden Carrots: An Analysis of Research Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 872-890, September.
    16. Clark, Derek J. & Riis, Christian, 2000. "Allocation efficiency in a competitive bribery game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 109-124, May.
    17. Gale, Ian L & Hausch, Donald B & Stegeman, Mark, 2000. "Sequential Procurement with Subcontracting," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(4), pages 989-1020, November.
    18. Rogerson, William P, 1989. "Profit Regulation of Defense Contractors and Prizes for Innovation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1284-1305, December.
    19. Stein, William E, 2002. "Asymmetric Rent-Seeking with More Than Two Contestants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 113(3-4), pages 325-336, December.
    20. Shy, Oz & Stenbacka, Rune, 2003. "Strategic outsourcing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 203-224, February.
    21. Alexander, Barbara J, 1997. "Mechanisms for Rent Transfers: Subcontracting among Military Aircraft Manufacturers," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 91(3-4), pages 251-269, June.
    22. Meland, Frode, 2002. "Unions and Market Integration in Contests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 112(3-4), pages 293-304, September.
    23. Baye, Michael R. & Hoppe, Heidrun C., 2003. "The strategic equivalence of rent-seeking, innovation, and patent-race games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 217-226, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khaled Bennour, 2009. "The value of rents and the likelihood of conflicts," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 56(2), pages 163-173, June.
    2. De Frutos, María Ángeles & Espinosa Alejos, María Paz, 2012. "Resale in Auctions with Financial Constraints," DFAEII Working Papers 1988-088X, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    3. Heijdra, Ben J. & Ligthart, Jenny E., 2010. "The Transitional Dynamics Of Fiscal Policy In Small Open Economies," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 1-28, February.
    4. repec:dau:papers:123456789/179 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Bos, Olivier, 2011. "How lotteries outperform auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 262-264, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    2. Gil Epstein & Yosef Mealem, 2015. "Politicians, governed versus non-governed interest groups and rent dissipation," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(1), pages 133-149, July.
    3. Gil S. Epstein & Yosef Mealem & Shmuel Nitzan, 2013. "Lotteries vs. All-Pay Auctions in Fair and Biased Contests," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 48-60, March.
    4. Gil S. Epstein & Yosef Mealem, 2013. "Politicians, Governed vs. Non-Governed Interest Groups and Rent Dissipation," Working Papers 2013-09, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    5. Chiappinelli, Olga, 2014. "An elimination contest with non-sunk bids," MPRA Paper 56140, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    7. Marco Runkel, 2006. "Optimal contest design, closeness and the contest success function," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 217-231, October.
    8. Johannes Münster, 2007. "Contests with investment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(8), pages 849-862.
    9. Qiang Fu & Jingfeng Lu, 2010. "Contest Design And Optimal Endogenous Entry," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 80-88, January.
    10. Münster, Johannes, 2006. "Contests with Investment," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 120, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    11. Pavel Kireyev, 2016. "Markets for Ideas: Prize Structure, Entry Limits, and the Design of Ideation Contests," Harvard Business School Working Papers 16-129, Harvard Business School.
    12. Segev, Ella & Sela, Aner, 2014. "Multi-stage sequential all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 371-382.
    13. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    14. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    15. Franke, Jörg & Kanzow, Christian & Leininger, Wolfgang & Schwartz, Alexandra, 2014. "Lottery versus all-pay auction contests: A revenue dominance theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 116-126.
    16. Qiang Fu & Qian Jiao & Jingfeng Lu, 2015. "Contests with endogenous entry," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(2), pages 387-424, May.
    17. Jean-François Mercier, 2018. "Selecting contestants for a rent-seeking contest," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 47(3), pages 927-947, September.
    18. Qiang Fu & Jingfeng Lu, 2012. "The optimal multi-stage contest," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(2), pages 351-382, October.
    19. Dahm, Matthias & Esteve-González, Patricia, 2018. "Affirmative action through extra prizes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 123-142.
    20. E. Feess & Gerd Muehlheusser & M. Walzl, 2008. "Unfair contests," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 267-291, April.
      • Feess, E. & Muehlheusser, G. & Walzl, M., 2004. "Unfair contests," Research Memorandum 048, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Contests; Outsourcing; Bargaining; Contest design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production
    • L24 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Contracting Out; Joint Ventures

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:bergec:2005_009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kjell Erik Lommerud (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iouibno.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.