In this paper we look at motivation over time by setting up a dynamic contest model where winning the first contest yields an advantage in the second contest. The win advantage introduces an asymmetry into the competition that we find reduces the expected value to the contestants of being in the...

We investigate a multi-period contest model in which a contestant.s present success gives an advantage over a rival in the future. How this win advantage affects contestants.efforts, and whether the laggard gives up or keep on fighting are key issues. We find that the expected effort of the...

We consider an effort-maximizing principal distributing a prize fund over two consecutive all-pay auctions. The two contestants are doubly heterogeneous: one of them has a head start in the first contest; and winning contest one gives an advantage in contest two that varies between players. We...

We introduce learning by doing in a dynamic contest. Contestants compete in an early round and can use the experience gained to reduce effort cost in a subsequent contest. A contest designer can decide how much of the prize mass to distribute in the early contest and how much to leave for the...

We develop a model to discuss a government's incentives to delegate to bureaucrats the regulation of an industry. The industry consists of a polluting firm with private information about its production technology. Implementing a transfer-based regulation policy requires the government to make...

This paper analyses how competition between media firms influences the way they are financed. In a setting where monopoly media firms choose to be completely financed by consumer payments, competition may lead the media firms to be financed by advertising as well. The closer substitutes the...

We study a health-insurance market where individuals are o.ered coverage against both medical expenditures and losses in income. Individuals vary in their level of innate ability. If there is private information about the probability of illness and an individual’s innate ability is su.ciently...

Our concern is with a firm-specific industrial policy. When R&D subsidies or taxes are differentiated among firms, the question arises which firms in an industry should receive such support. We analyze a situation where firms differ in their R&D technologies in two distinct ways: They differ...

We consider a model of strategic informative advertising where the advertising is done on TV and where the TV channels' advertising prices are endogenously determined. We discuss how these prices, and the advertising firms' advertising efforts, vary with the two key parameters of the model: the...

We discuss the prevalence of pooling equilibria in a two-period model of an insurance market with asymmetric information. We solve the model numerically. In addition to reporting cases where a pooling equilibrium exists, we pay attention to why, in the case of non-existence of a pooling...