Risk Aversion in Contests

Stergios Skaperdas and Li Gan ()

Economic Journal, 1995, vol. 105, issue 431, pages 951-62

Abstract: In a contest, participants spend money or effort to increase their chances of winning a prize. The authors examine primarily the following question: Could the timid (the more risk averse) have a better chance of winning in contests? Under limited liability the answer is always positive. In the absence of limited liability there is no single answer, whereas when the prize is shared as a function of effort the outcome is independent of the contestants' risk aversion. The authors also relate their results to self-protection and examine some other implications of risk aversion. Copyright 1995 by Royal Economic Society.

Date: 1995
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-0133%2819950 ... 0.CO%3B2-P&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:105:y:1995:i:431:p:951-62

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0013-0133

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is edited by Antonio Ciccone, Leonardo Felli, Steve Machin, Andrew Scott, Steve Pischke and David Myatt

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().