Step-by-step group contests with group-specific public-good prizes

Katsuya Kobayashi ()
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Katsuya Kobayashi: Hosei University

Economics of Governance, 2019, vol. 20, issue 2, No 4, 183-204

Abstract: Abstract The achievements reached by group members’ effort, which accompanies the possibility of members’ free-riding, affect the outcomes of competition among groups. In some cases, each achievement has the binary characteristic of “one or nothing.” For example, research groups face the challenge of making a scientific finding or not. The groups compete for a scientific breakthrough by making the related findings in a “step-by-step” manner. One finding could fail because of a mistake caused by a slight lack of effort by one member. Such a characteristic of “one or nothing” motivates group members without any incentive scheme. This study analyzes group contests with group-specific public-good prizes, in which we introduce a step function with the characteristics of “one or nothing” and “step-by-step” as a group impact function. We show the existence of the Nash equilibrium at which no group member free-rides on the others and at which more achievements than those reachable by a single member are reached.

Keywords: Step-by-step technology; Group contest; Group-specific public good (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D70 H41 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10101-019-00224-4

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