Incomplete Information and Rent Dissipation in Deterministic Contests

Rene Kirkegaard

No 1012, Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: In a deterministic contest or all-pay auction, all rents are dissipated when information is complete and contestants are identical. As one contestant becomes "stronger", that is, values the prize more, total expenditures are known to decrease monotonically. Thus, asymmetry among contestants reduces competition and rent dissipation. Recently, this result has been shown to hold for other, non-deterministic, contest success functions as well, thereby suggesting a certain robustness. In this paper, however, the complete information assumption is shown to be crucial. With incomplete information -- regardless of how little -- total expenditures in a deterministic two-player contest increase when one contestant becomes marginally stronger, starting from a symmetric contest. In fact, both contestants expend resources more aggressively; with complete information, neither of them do so.

Keywords: All-pay auctions; Asymmetric auctions; Rent seeking. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D44 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Incomplete information and rent dissipation in deterministic contests (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gue:guelph:2010-12.

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