Contest Functions: Theoretical Foundations and Issues in Estimation

Hao Jia, Stergios Skaperdas and Samarth Vaidya

No 111214, Working Papers from University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics

Abstract: Contest functions (alternatively, contest success functions) determine probabilities of winning and losing as a function of contestants’ e ort. They are used widely in many areas of economics that employ contest games, from tournaments and rent-seeking to conflict and sports. We first examine the theoretical foundations of contest functions and classify them into four types of derivation: stochastic, axiomatic, optimally-derived, and microfounded. The additive form (which includes the ratio or "Tullock" functional form) can be derived in all four di erent ways. We also explore issues in the econometric estimation of contest functions, including concerns with data, endogeneity, and model comparison.

Keywords: Rent-seeking; Conflict; Tournaments; Litigation; Advertising (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C11 C72 D72 D74 L23 L41 M37 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.economics.uci.edu/files/docs/workingpa ... 012/skaperdas-14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation (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:irv:wpaper:111214

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Melissa Valdez ().