Existence, Uniqueness, and Comparative Statics in Contests

Martin Jensen

No 15/16, Discussion Papers in Economics from Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester

Abstract: Many important games are aggregative allowing for robust comparative statics analysis even when a game does not exhibit strategic complements or substitutes (Acemoglu and Jensen (2013)). This paper establishes such comparative statics results for contests improving upon existing results by (i) allowing payoff functions to be discontinuous at the origin, and (ii) allowing for asymmetric rent-seeking contests and patent races. A leading example where (i) is relevant is the classical Tullock contest (Tullock (1980)). The paper also studies existence and uniqueness of equilibria extending the results of Szidarovszky and Okuguchi (1997) and Cornes and Hartley (2005) to patent races.

Keywords: Comparative statics; Uniqueness; Existence; Contest; Rent-seeking; Aggregative game; Local solvability condition. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D80 D90 E20 I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth, nep-hpe, nep-ino, nep-mic and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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