All-pay contests with unordered cost asymmetry: An experimental study

Yohanes E. Riyanto, Siqiang Yang and Feng Zhu

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 236, issue C

Abstract: This paper presents a laboratory experiment investigating contest design and contestant behavior in settings where participants have different cost functions and regions of advantage, a topic that is relatively unexplored. Utilizing lab experiments based on Siegel’s (2009, 2010) models, we discover that bidding strategies and payoffs largely follow theoretical predictions. The weakest contestants tend to over-participate due to their cost advantage in low-bid regions. Adding a prize or increasing the prize value benefits stronger participants and increases the designer’s revenue. While decreasing the number of contestants also favors stronger participants, the designer’s revenue decrease in response.

Keywords: Lab experiment; All-pay contests; Unordered cost asymmetry; Equilibrium payoffs and bids; Contest design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125002501
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:236:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125002501

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107131

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().