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Winner-Take-All Tournaments

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  • Drugov, Mikhail
  • Ryvkin, Dmitry

Abstract

This paper provides new general results for winner-take-all rank-order tournaments with additive and multiplicative noise. We show that the comparative statics of the individual equilibrium effort with respect to the number of players follow the shape of the density the noise distribution. For aggregate effort, a similar relation holds for the failure (hazard) rate of the noise distribution. The equilibrium effort decreases as noise becomes more dispersed, in the sense of the dispersive order or appropriately defined entropy. These results are then extended to the case of a stochastic number of players, and new results on the effects of population uncertainty are obtained. All relevant results for the Tullock contest follow as a special case.

Suggested Citation

  • Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2017. "Winner-Take-All Tournaments," CEPR Discussion Papers 12067, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12067
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    Cited by:

    1. Boosey, Luke & Brookins, Philip & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2019. "Contests between groups of unknown size," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 756-769.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tournament; Stochastic number of players; Unimodality; Log-supermodularity; Failure rate; Entropy; Dispersive order; Tullock contest;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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