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Lotteries vs. All-Pay Auctions in Fair and Biased Contests

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  • Gil S. Epstein
  • Yosef Mealem
  • Shmuel Nitzan

Abstract

The form of contests for a single fixed prize can be determined by a designer who maximizes the contestants' efforts. This paper establishes that, under common knowledge of the two asymmetric contestants' prize valuations, a fair Tullock-type endogenously determined lottery is always superior to an all-pay-auction; it yields larger expected efforts (revenues) for the contest designer. If the contest can be unfair (structural discrimination is allowed), then the optimal lottery cannot be dominated by an all-pay-auction.
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  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:25:y:2013:i:1:p:48-60
    DOI: 10.1111/ecpo.12003
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Tullock Lottery Contests with Direct and Covert Discrimination
      by Matthew Wildrick Thomas in Matthew Wildrick Thomas on 2021-04-15 00:00:00

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    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Matros & Alex Possajennikov, 2014. "Common Value Allocation Mechanisms with Private Information: Lotteries or Auctions?," Discussion Papers 2014-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    2. 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.
    3. Jose Alcalde & Matthias Dahm, 2016. "Proportional payoffs in legislative bargaining with weighted voting: a characterization," Discussion Papers 2016-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    4. Franke, Jörg & Leininger, Wolfgang & Wasser, Cédric, 2018. "Optimal favoritism in all-pay auctions and lottery contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 22-37.
    5. Ewerhart, Christian, 2017. "Revenue ranking of optimally biased contests: The case of two players," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 167-170.
    6. Epstein, Gil S. & Mealem, Yosef, 2013. "Politicians, Governed vs. Non-Governed Interest Groups and Rent Dissipation," IZA Discussion Papers 7736, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. 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.
    8. Yosef Mealem & Shmuel Nitzan, 2012. "Differential Prize Taxation and Structural Discrimination in Contests," CESifo Working Paper Series 3831, CESifo.
    9. Yosef Mealem & Shmuel Nitzan, 2014. "Equity and effectiveness of optimal taxation in contests under an all-pay auction," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(2), pages 437-464, February.
    10. Clark, Derek J. & Kundu, Tapas, 2021. "Competitive balance: Information disclosure and discrimination in an asymmetric contest," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 178-198.
    11. Alcalde, José & Dahm, Matthias, 2019. "Dual sourcing with price discovery," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 225-246.
    12. Marco Sahm, 2022. "Optimal Accuracy of Unbiased Tullock Contests with Two Heterogeneous Players," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-6, March.
    13. Yosef Mealem & Shmuel Nitzan, 2013. "Direct and Structural Discrimination in Contests," CESifo Working Paper Series 4518, CESifo.
    14. 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.
    15. Feng, Xin & Lu, Jingfeng, 2017. "Uniqueness of equilibrium in two-player asymmetric Tullock contests with intermediate discriminatory power," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 61-64.
    16. Grajzl, Peter & Baniak, Andrzej, 2018. "Private enforcement, corruption, and antitrust design," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 284-307.
    17. Tomohiko Kawamori, 2020. "Extractive contest design," Papers 2006.01808, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    18. Christian Ewerhart & Julia Lareida, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure in asymmetric contests," ECON - Working Papers 279, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Jul 2023.
    19. Marco Sahm, 2022. "Optimal Accuracy of Unbiased Tullock Contests with Two Heterogeneous Players," CESifo Working Paper Series 9601, CESifo.
    20. repec:elg:eechap:15325_8 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Dongryul Lee & Joon Song, 2019. "Optimal Team Contests to Induce More Efforts," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(3), pages 448-476, April.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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