The present analysis introduces the N-Effect - the discovery that increasing the number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation. Studies 1a-b found evidence that average test scores (e.g., SAT scores) fall as the average number of test-takers at test-taking venues increases. Study...

I examine a game-theoretical model of two variants of double-elimination tournaments, and derive the equilibrium behavior of symmetric players and the optimal prize allocation assuming a designer aims to maximize total effort. I compare these theoretical properties to the well-known...

Many economic, political and social environments can be described as contests in which agents exert costly efforts while competing over the distribution of a scarce resource. These environments have been studied using Tullock contests, all-pay auctions and rank-order tournaments. This survey...

Many economic, political and social environments can be described as contests in which agents exert costly efforts while competing over the distribution of a scarce resource. These environments have been studied using Tullock contests, all-pay auctions and rankorder tournaments. This survey...

We report an experimental test of alternative rules in innovation contests when success may not be feasible and contestants may learn from each other. Following Halac et al. (forthcoming), the contest designer can vary the prize allocation rule from Winner-Take-All in which the first successful...

This paper studies a class of games, quot;All-Pay Contestsquot;, which captures general asymmetries and sunk investments inherent in scenarios such as lobbying, competition for market power, labor-market tournaments, and Ramp;D races. Players compete for one of several identical prizes by...

Tournaments consisting of iterative matches are a common mechanism for determining how to allocate a prize. For this reason it is important to understand the behavioral as well as the theoretical properties of different tournament structures. Given that laboratory experiments have consistently...

Scholars of environmental politics emphasize the importance of path dependence for sustainable energy transitions, or the extensive deployment of clean energy in a society. However, they frequently overlook the strategic nature of energy policy. We develop a formal model of the political economy...

Two well-known mechanisms for enhancing managers' accountability are yardstick competition and internal monitoring. Yardstick competition puts managers in direct competition when firms make decisions for re-appointment (Tirole, 2006). Monitoring is used by firms to detect managers' rent-seeking...