Contest Copycats: Adversarial Duplication of Effort in Contests

Jonas Send

Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Abstract: Participants in an innovation contest may steal their opponents’ ideas to enhance their chance of winning. To model this, I introduce the ability to copy another player’s effort in a Tullock contest between two players. I characterise the unique equilibrium in this game dependent on the cost of copying and one of the players’ productivity advantage. If effort costs are low, the less productive player is more likely to win the contest. The model’s comparative statics have important implications for governments who subsidise ï¬ rms in contests and for contest designers.

Keywords: Innovation Contest; Espionage; Imitation; Tullock Contest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C78 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
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