Sorting in iterated incumbency contests

Samuel Häfner () and Georg Nöldeke
Additional contact information
Samuel Häfner: University of Basel

Economic Theory, 2022, vol. 74, issue 4, No 5, 1103-1140

Abstract: Abstract This paper analyzes incumbency contests in a large population setting. Incumbents repeatedly face different challengers, holding on to their positions until defeated in a contest. Defeated incumbents turn into challengers until they win a contest against an incumbent, thereby regaining an incumbency position. Individuals are heterogeneous as regards their payoffs from being incumbent. We consider steady-state equilibria and study how and to which extent individuals sort into the incumbency positions depending on their type. In particular, we identify sufficient conditions for positive sorting, meaning that types with higher incumbency payoffs are overrepresented among the incumbents, and show that negative rather than positive sorting may also arise in equilibrium when these conditions are violated. Further results show how incumbency rents, surplus and sorting are affected by the frequency at which incumbency is contested.

Keywords: Contests; Sorting; Incumbency rents; Steady-state equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00199-019-01205-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Sorting in Iterated Incumbency Contests (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joecth:v:74:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s00199-019-01205-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... eory/journal/199/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00199-019-01205-8

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Theory is currently edited by Nichoals Yanneils

More articles in Economic Theory from Springer, Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().