Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Lottery versus All-Pay Auction Contests – A Revenue Dominance Theorem

Contents:

Author Info

  • Jörg Franke

    ()

  • Christian Kanzow
  • Wolfgang Leininger
  • Alexandra Schwartz

Abstract

We allow a contest organizer to bias a contest in a discriminatory way, that is, she can favor specific contestants through the choice of contest success functions in order to maximize total equilibrium effort (resp. revenue). The scope for revenue enhancement through biasing is analyzed and compared for the two predominant contest regimes; i.e. all-pay auctions and lottery contests. Our main result reveals that an appropriately biased all-pay auction revenue dominates the optimally biased lottery contest for all levels of heterogeneity among contestants. Moreover, such a biased all-pay auction will never make use of the celebrated exclusion principle advanced by Baye et al. (1993).

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://repec.rwi-essen.de/files/REP_12_315.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen in its series Ruhr Economic Papers with number 0315.

as in new window
Length: 19 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:rwi:repape:0315

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Hohenzollernstraße 1-3, 45128 Essen
Phone: (0201)8149-0
Fax: (0201)8149-200
Email:
Web page: http://www.rwi-essen.de/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Web: http://www.rwi-essen.de/publikationen/

Related research

Keywords: All-pay auction; lottery contest; bias; revenue;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Baye, M.R. & Kovenock, D. & De Vries, C.G., 1991. "Rigging The Lobbying Process: An Application Of The All- Pay Auction," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1002, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
  2. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley, 2002. "Asymmetric Contests with General Technologies," Keele Economics Research Papers KERP 2002/22, Centre for Economic Research, Keele University.
  3. Epstein, Gil S. & Mealem, Yosef & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2011. "Political culture and discrimination in contests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 88-93.
  4. Baye, M. & Kovenock, D. & Vries, C. de, 1990. "The All-Pay Auction with Complete Information," Discussion Paper 1990-51, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
  5. Epstein, Gil S. & Mealem, Yosef & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2011. "Political culture and discrimination in contests," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 88-93, February.
  6. Konrad, Kai A., 2009. "Strategy and Dynamics in Contests," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199549603, September.
  7. Arye L. Hillman & John G. Riley, 1989. "Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 17-39, 03.
  8. Ron Siegel, 2010. "Asymmetric Contests with Conditional Investments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2230-60, December.
  9. Fang, Hanming, 2002. " Lottery versus All-Pay Auction Models of Lobbying," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 112(3-4), pages 351-71, September.
  10. Rene Kirkegaard, 2008. "Favoritism in Contests: Head Starts and Handicaps," Working Papers 0805, Brock University, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2008.
  11. Stein, William E, 2002. " Asymmetric Rent-Seeking with More Than Two Contestants," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 113(3-4), pages 325-36, December.
  12. 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.
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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2012. "A Nested Contest: Tullock Meets the All-Pay Auction," Working Papers 1211, University of Guelph, Department of Economics.
  2. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2012. "A Nested Contest: Tullock Meets the All-pay Auction," CESifo Working Paper Series 3976, CESifo Group Munich.
  3. Amegashie, J. Atsu, 2012. "A nested contest: Tullock meets the All-Pay Auction," MPRA Paper 41654, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Sep 2012.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rwi:repape:0315

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Sabine Weiler).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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