Learning by Doing in Contests

Derek J. Clark () and Tore Nilssen ()
Additional contact information
Derek J. Clark: University of Tromsø, Postal: University of Tromsø, NO- 9037 Tromsø, Norway,

No 09/2010, Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We introduce learning by doing in a dynamic contest. Contestants compete in an early round and can use the experience gained to reduce effort cost in a subsequent contest. A contest designer can decide how much of the prize mass to distribute in the early contest and how much to leave for the later one in order to maximize total efforts. We show how this division affects effort at each stage, and present conditions that characterize the optimal split. The results are indicative of the fact that the designer weakly prefers to leave most of the prize mass for the second contest to reap the gains from the learning by doing effect.

Keywords: Learning by doing; dynamic contest; prize division (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2010-05-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as J. Clark, Derek and Tore Nilssen, 'Learning by Doing in Contests' in Public Choice, 2013, pages 329-343.

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.sv.uio.no/econ/english/research/unpubl ... 010/Memo-09-2010.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Learning by doing in contests (2013)
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:hhs:osloec:2010_009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Memorandum from Oslo University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mari Strønstad Øverås ().