Biased contests for symmetric players

Mikhail Drugov and Dmitry Ryvkin

Games and Economic Behavior, 2017, vol. 103, issue C, 116-144

Abstract: In a biased contest, one of the players has an advantage in the winner determination process. We characterize a novel class of biased contest success functions pertaining to such contests and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for zero bias to be a critical point of arbitrary objectives satisfying certain symmetry restrictions. We, however, challenge the common wisdom that unbiased contests are always optimal when contestants are symmetric ex ante or even ex post. We show that contests with arbitrary favorites, i.e., biased contests of symmetric players, can be optimal in terms of various objectives such as expected aggregate effort, the probability to reveal the stronger player as the winner or expected effort of the winner.

Keywords: Biased contest; Biased contest success function; Aggregate effort; Predictive power; Winner's effort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D63 D72 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

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Working Paper: Biased contests for symmetric players (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:103:y:2017:i:c:p:116-144

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.02.003

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