Best-of-Three Contests: Experimental Evidence

Shakun Mago, Roman Sheremeta and Andrew Yates

Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute

Abstract: We conduct an experimental analysis of a best-of-three Tullock contest. Intermediate prizes lead to higher efforts, while increasing the role of luck (as opposed to effort) leads to lower efforts. Both intermediate prizes and luck reduce the probability of contest ending in two rounds. The patterns of players? efforts and the probability that a contest ends in two rounds is consistent with „strategic momentum?, i.e. momentum generated due to strategic incentives inherent in the contest. We do not find evidence for „psychological momentum?, i.e. momentum which emerges when winning affects players? confidence. Similar to previous studies of contests, we find significantly higher efforts than predicted and strong heterogeneity in effort between subjects.

Keywords: best-of-three contest; experiments; strategic momentum; psychological momentum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.chapman.edu/ESI/wp/Sheremeta-The_Best_of_Three.pdf (application/pdf)

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:chu:wpaper:10-24

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Chapman University, Economic Science Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Megan Luetje ().