We analyze equilibria of two-player contests where players have intention-based preferences. We find that players invest more effort compared to the case with selfish preferences and are even willing to exert effort when the monetary value of the prize converges to zero. As a consequence,...

We analyze Nash equilibria of share and probabilistic contests when players have distributional preferences. If players are sufficiently similar, distributional preferences create multiple equilibria. For the case of only mildly heterogeneous players, equilibrium effort can be lower as well as...

I consider a model in which an asset owner must decide how much to invest in his asset mindful of the fact that an encroacher’s valuation of the asset is increasing in the asset owner’s investment. Due to incomplete property rights, the encroacher and asset owner engage in a contest over the...

This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support all major theoretical predictions. In the auction treatment, where winning a...

We define an indirect evolutionary approach formally and apply it to (Tullock) contests. While it is known (Leininger, 2003) that the direct evolutionary approach in the form of finite population ESS (Schaffer, 1988) yields more aggressive behavior than in Nash equilibrium, it is now shown that...

We analyze a contest between two groups where group members have differing valuations for the contested rent. Generically the pivotal group member with the median valuation of the rent will not act himself but will want to send a group member that has preferences different to her own into the...

Introducing a threshold in the sense of a minimal project size transforms a public goods game with an inefficient equilibrium into a coordination game with a set of Pareto-superior equilibria. Thresholds may therefore improve efficiency in the voluntary provision of public goods. In our one-shot...

This paper experimentally examines behavior in a two-player game of attack and defense of a weakest-link network of targets, in which the attacker’s objective is to successfully attack at least one target and the defender’s objective is diametrically opposed. We apply two benchmark contest...