This article describes a large number of contestants with high and low levels of talent who individually decide to enter a contest or take their heterogeneous outside options. We derive a critical condition for which only high types, only low types or both types participate in the contest. If a...

In this article, contestants play with a certain probability in Contest A and with the complementary probability in Contest B. This situation is called contest uncertainty. In both contests, effort is additively distorted by a contest noise parameter which affects the sensitivity of the contest...