The authors consider a rent-seeking contest of the kind introduced by Tullock (1980) in which two players compete for a monopoly rent. They extend the contest by requiring that if a player puts forward an effort, his expenditures must be larger than or equal to some minimum level. The authors...

In the Dutch Postcode Lottery a postal code (19 households on average) is randomly selected weekly, and prizes Ðconsisting of cash and a new BMW-- are awarded to lottery participants living in that postal code. On average, this generates a temporary, unexpected income shock equal to about eight...