Contest success functions: the common-pool perspective

Christian Ewerhart

No 195, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: The axiomatic route to the foundation of contest success functions (CSF) has proved to be both useful and prolific. The standard approach in the literature is based on the decision-theoretic notion that choice probabilities should be independent of irrelevant alternatives (Skaperdas, Economic Theory 1996). The present paper develops an alternative approach that suggests itself once the contest is re-interpreted as a common-pool resource problem. Proceeding along these lines, new axiomatizations are obtained for a variety of popular classes of CSFs, including the logit, Tullock, and difference-form CSFs. The axiomatizations provided are particularly parsimonious in the important special case of two contestants.

Keywords: Contest success functions; axiomatic approach; common-pool resource problems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 D42 D62 D72 Q2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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