Tullock contests of weakly heterogeneous players

I explore asymmetric equilibria in a Tullock contest of heterogeneous players in the case when the players’ heterogeneity is weak, and the effort optimization problem can be analyzed in the linear approximation. With increasing discriminatory power of the contest, players sequentially drop out. The corresponding threshold values of the discriminatory power are related to those identified earlier for a Tullock contest of identical players. Weak heterogeneity, however, is sufficient to make the players’ behavior strongly asymmetric and qualitatively alter the structure of the equilibria as compared to the homogeneous case. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007