IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/8021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Round-Robin Tournaments with Effort Constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Sela, Aner
  • ,

Abstract

We study a round-robin tournament with n symmetric players where in each of the n-1 stages each of the players competes against a different player in the Tullock contest. Each player has a limited budget of effort that decreases within the stages proportionally to the effort he exerted in the previous stages. We show that when the prize for winning (value of winning) is equal between the stages, a player's effort is weakly decreasing over the stages. We also show how the contest designer can influence the players' allocation of effort by changing the distribution of prizes between the stages. In particular, we analyze the optimal distribution of prizes over the stages that balance the effort allocation such that a player exerts the same effort over the different stages. In addition, we analyze the distribution of prizes over the stages that maximizes the players' expected total effort.

Suggested Citation

  • Sela, Aner & ,, 2010. "Round-Robin Tournaments with Effort Constraints," CEPR Discussion Papers 8021, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP8021
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alex Robson, 2005. "Multi-Item Contests," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-446, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    2. Klumpp, Tilman & Polborn, Mattias K., 2006. "Primaries and the New Hampshire Effect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1073-1114, August.
    3. Kvasov, Dmitriy, 2007. "Contests with limited resources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 738-748, September.
    4. Dmitry Ryvkin, 2011. "Fatigue in Dynamic Tournaments," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 1011-1041, December.
    5. Warneryd, Karl, 1998. "Distributional conflict and jurisdictional organization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 435-450, September.
    6. Rick Harbaugh & Tilman Klumpp, 2005. "Early Round Upsets and Championship Blowouts," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(2), pages 316-329, April.
    7. Konrad, Kai A., 2004. "Bidding in hierarchies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1301-1308, December.
    8. Gradstein, Mark & Konrad, Kai A, 1999. "Orchestrating Rent Seeking Contests," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(458), pages 536-545, October.
    9. Moldovanu, Benny & Sela, Aner, 2006. "Contest architecture," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 70-96, January.
    10. Amegashie, J. Atsu & Cadsby, C. Bram & Song, Yang, 2007. "Competitive burnout: Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 213-239, May.
    11. Dmitry Ryvkin & Andreas Ortmann, 2008. "The Predictive Power of Three Prominent Tournament Formats," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 492-504, March.
    12. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    13. Christopher Ferrall & Anthony A. Smith, 1999. "A Sequential Game Model Of Sports Championship Series: Theory And Estimation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 704-719, November.
    14. Che, Yeon-Koo & Gale, Ian, 1997. "Rent Dissipation When Rent Seekers Are Budget Constrained," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 92(1-2), pages 109-126, July.
    15. Alexander Matros, 2006. "Elimination Tournaments where Players Have Fixed Resources," Working Paper 205, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2006.
    16. Brian Roberson, 2006. "The Colonel Blotto game," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 29(1), pages 1-24, September.
    17. Snyder, James M, 1989. "Election Goals and the Allocation of Campaign Resources," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 637-660, May.
    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. Dmitry Dagaev & Andrey Zubanov, 2022. "Round-robin tournaments with limited resources," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(3), pages 525-583, October.

    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. Aner Sela & Eyal Erez, 2013. "Dynamic contests with resource constraints," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(4), pages 863-882, October.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Aner Sela, 2021. "Resource Allocations In Multi-Stage Contests," Working Papers 2105, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    5. Aner Sela, 2016. "Two Stage Contests With Effort-Dependent Rewards," Working Papers 1612, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    6. Reut Megidish & Aner Sela, 2014. "Sequential contests with synergy and budget constraints," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(1), pages 215-243, January.
    7. Klumpp, Tilman & Konrad, Kai A. & Solomon, Adam, 2019. "The dynamics of majoritarian Blotto games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 402-419.
    8. 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.
    9. Aner Sela, 2017. "Two-stage contests with effort-dependent values of winning," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 21(4), pages 253-272, December.
    10. Subhasish Chowdhury & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2013. "An experimental investigation of Colonel Blotto games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(3), pages 833-861, April.
    11. Malin Arve & Olga Chiappinelli, 2021. "The Role of Budget Constraints in Sequential Elimination Tournaments," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(4), pages 1059-1087, October.
    12. Dmitry Ryvkin & Andreas Ortmann, 2008. "The Predictive Power of Three Prominent Tournament Formats," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 492-504, March.
    13. Shakun D. Mago & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2019. "New Hampshire Effect: behavior in sequential and simultaneous multi-battle contests," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(2), pages 325-349, June.
    14. Martin Grossmann, 2011. "Endogenous Liquidity Constraints in a Dynamic Contest," Working Papers 0148, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).
    15. Sela, Aner & Megidish, Reut, 2014. "Optimal Allocations in Round-Robin Tournaments," CEPR Discussion Papers 9873, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Sela, Aner, 2011. "Best-of-three all-pay auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 67-70, July.
    17. Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2009. "Is the 50-State Strategy Optimal?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 213-236, April.
    18. Grossmann, Martin & Hottiger, Dieter, 2020. "Liquidity constraints and the formation of unbalanced contests," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    19. Kai A. Konrad & Dan Kovenock, 2010. "Contests With Stochastic Abilities," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 89-103, January.
    20. Zeynep B. Irfanoglu & Shakun D. Mago & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2014. "The New Hampshire Effect: Behavior in Sequential and Simultaneous Election Contests," Working Papers 14-15, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Effort constraints; Round-robin tournaments; Tullock contests;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions

    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:cpr:ceprdp:8021. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.