Contest with cooperative behavior: a note

The point of departure of this paper is that players in a contest may have mixed motives. On one hand, players have the interest of winning the contest and taking the prize. On the other hand, they could be better off taking part in a contest which implies some cooperative behaviour. This paper presents a contest model characterized by: (1) the existence of a second kind of effort here termed ‘cooperative effort'; (2) an asymmetry in the evaluation of the stake; (3) a degree of responsiveness to cooperative efforts. By comparing a basic contest model with the above-mentioned model, it has been shown that players may be better off in a contest which involves some cooperative behaviour. As the asymmetry in the evaluation of the stake becomes larger and larger, even a smaller degree of responsiveness to the aggregate cooperative efforts would make players better off. Eventually, a contest involving also cooperative efforts is less balanced than a pure contest.