Delegation with multiple instruments in a rent-seeking contest

We consider delegation in a rent-seeking contest with two players, where delegates have more instruments at their disposal than the main players. We endogenize both the decision to hire a delegate and the contingent fee offered to the delegates. We characterize the situations when either no, one or two players hire a delegate in equilibrium. We show that the decision to hire a delegate depends in a non-monotonic way on the size of the contested prize. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007