IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejtec/v7y2007i1n43.html

Contests with Ties

Author

Listed:
  • Cohen Chen

    (Ben-Gurion University, chencohe@bgu.ac.il)

  • Sela Aner

    (Ben-Gurion University, anersela@bgu.ac.il)

Abstract

We study two-player all-pay contests in which there is a positive probability of a tied outcome. We show that the players' efforts in equilibrium do not depend on the expected prize in the case of a tie given that this prize is smaller than the prize for winning. The implications of this result are twofold. First, in symmetric one-stage contests, the designer who wishes to maximize the expected total effort should not award a prize in the case of a tie which is larger than one-third of the prize for winning. Second, in multi-stage contests, the designer should not limit the number of stages (tie-breaks) but should allow the contest to continue until a winner is decided.

Suggested Citation

  • Cohen Chen & Sela Aner, 2007. "Contests with Ties," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-18, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:7:y:2007:i:1:n:43
    DOI: 10.2202/1935-1704.1398
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1935-1704.1398
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1935-1704.1398?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Philipp Ager & Leonardo Bursztyn & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2016. "Killer Incentives: Status Competition and Pilot Performance during World War II," NBER Working Papers 22992, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Luis C. Corchón & Marco Serena, 2016. "Properties of Contests," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2018-10, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    3. Oindrila Dey & Swapnendu Banerjee, 2014. "Status Incentives with Discrete Effort: A Note," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(2), pages 1205-1213.
    4. Maya Eden, 2006. "Optimal Ties in Contests," Discussion Paper Series dp430, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    5. Li, Zheng, 2017. "Nash equilibria in all-pay auctions with discrete strategy space," Economics Discussion Papers 2017-22, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Pradeep Dubey & John Geanakoplos, 2016. "Money and Status: How Best to Incentivize Work," Department of Economics Working Papers 16-02, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
    7. Han Feng & David Hobson, 2015. "Gambling in contests modelled with diffusions," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 38(1), pages 21-37, April.
    8. Marcin Dziubiński, 2013. "Non-symmetric discrete General Lotto games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(4), pages 801-833, November.
    9. Cohen, Chen & Levi, Ofer & Sela, Aner, 2019. "All-pay auctions with asymmetric effort constraints," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 18-23.
    10. Lorens Imhof & Matthias Kräkel, 2016. "Ex post unbalanced tournaments," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(1), pages 73-98, February.
    11. Aner Sela, 2023. "Resource allocations in the best-of-k ( $$k=2,3$$ k = 2 , 3 ) contests," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 235-260, August.
    12. Li, Bo & Wu, Zenan & Xing, Zeyu, 2023. "Optimally biased contests with draws," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    13. Matthias Kräkel, 2014. "Optimal seedings in elimination tournaments revisited," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(1), pages 77-91, April.
    14. Yizhaq Minchuk, 2022. "Winner‐pay contests with a no‐winner possibility," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(6), pages 1874-1879, September.
    15. HHironori Otsubo, 2012. "Contests with Incumbency Advantages: An Experiment Investigation of the Effect of Limits on Spending Behavior and Outcome," Jena Economics Research Papers 2012-020, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    16. Aner Sela, 2022. "Ineffective Prizes In Multi-Dimensional Contests," Working Papers 2205, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    17. Goel, Sumit & Goyal, Amit, 2023. "Optimal tie-breaking rules," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    18. Aner Sela, 2024. "Intermediate prizes in multi-dimensional contests," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 97(4), pages 721-743, December.
    19. Lang, Matthias & Seel, Christian & Strack, Philipp, 2014. "Deadlines in stochastic contests," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 134-142.
    20. Alan Gelder & Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2022. "All-pay auctions with ties," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(4), pages 1183-1231, November.
    21. Gelder, Alan & Kovenock, Dan & Sheremeta, Roman, 2015. "Behavior in All-Pay Auctions with Ties," MPRA Paper 67517, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Gil S. Epstein & Ira N. Gang, 2010. "A Political Economy of the Immigrant Assimilation: Internal Dynamics," Working Papers 2010-13, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    23. Alberto Vesperoni, 2016. "A contest success function for rankings," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(4), pages 905-937, December.
    24. Brownback, Andy, 2018. "A classroom experiment on effort allocation under relative grading," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 113-128.
    25. Shelegia, Sandro & Wilson, Christopher, 2022. "Costly Participation and Default Allocations in All-Pay Contests," CEPR Discussion Papers 17611, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:bpj:bejtec:v:7:y:2007:i:1:n:43. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    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.