We aim at characterizing which kind of functions could be explained (rationalized) as the best reply of payoff-maximizing agents in contests for a fixed prize. We show that the rationalizability strongly differs between Decisive Contests, where the prize is allocated with certainty, and Possibly...

We consider a best-of-three Tullock contest between two ex-ante identical players. An effort-maximizing designer commits to a vector of player-specific biases (advantages or disadvantages). In our benchmark model the designer chooses victory-dependent biases (i.e., the biases depend on the...

In noisy contests where only the winners entry will eventually be implemented, the suitable objective is to maximize the quality of the entry of the expected winner. We compare the optimal set of rules in contests under such an objective to the one under maximization of the sum of contestants'...

We investigate the temporal structure that maximizes the winner's effort in large homogeneous contests, thus extending Hinnosaar (2019)'s analysis of total effort. We find that the winner's effort ranges from a lower bound of 0 to an upper bound of one third of the value of the prize, depending...

We study the sorting of contestants across Tullock contests, and the allocation of a prize budget across these contests. Our benchmark result is that total effort is maximized by a unique grand contest and contestant exclusions decrease total effort. We consider two extensions of our benchmark...