Strategic thinking in contests

David Bruner (), Caleb Cox (), David M. McEvoy () and Brock Stoddard
Additional contact information
David Bruner: Appalachian State University
Caleb Cox: Virginia Commonwealth University
David M. McEvoy: Appalachian State University

Experimental Economics, 2022, vol. 25, issue 3, No 7, 942-973

Abstract: Abstract We examine motives for ‘overbidding’ in contests between individuals using a “two-headed” approach to decision-making. In “two-headed” contests, subject pairs send suggested bids and messages to a partner. Content analysis of the messages provides insight into an individual’s bidding motives. In addition, we elicit measures of preferences, beliefs, and impulsiveness. We find that beliefs about others’ bids and messages that emphasize winning (i.e., utility of winning) are the most robust predictors of ‘overbidding’. Our results suggest that analyzing communication provides a rich window into an individual’s thought process when making decisions, and can complement insights from elicited values from common decision tasks (Replication materials, including data, do files, and software, are available at https://sites.google.com/view/david-bruner/research ).

Keywords: Tullock contest; Lottery contest; Winner-take-all; Two-headed contest; Team contest; Strategic thinking; Communication; Overbidding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10683-021-09735-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Strategic Thinking in Contests (2019)
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:kap:expeco:v:25:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10683-021-09735-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/10683/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10683-021-09735-6

Access Statistics for this article

Experimental Economics is currently edited by David J. Cooper, Lata Gangadharan and Charles N. Noussair

More articles in Experimental Economics from Springer, Economic Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().