We investigate the incentive consequences of introducing the possibility of a draw into a lottery contest. Equilibrium total effort unambiguously decreases when draws are introduced, whereas the equilibrium expected winner's effort increases when the contestants' valuations of the prize become...

A large empirical literature found that the correlation between insurance purchase and ex post realization of risk is often statistically insignificant or negative. This is inconsistent with the predictions from the classic models of insurance a la Akerlof (1970), Pauly (1974) and Rothschild and...

A large empirical literature found that the correlation between insurance purchase and ex post realization of risk is often statistically insignificant or negative. This is inconsistent with the predictions from the classic models of insurance a la Akerlof (1970), Pauly (1974) and Rothschild and...

We study the incentives of players to disclose information on their private valuations of the prize ahead of a rent-seeking contest. We show that information sharing can arise in equilibrium if types are concentrated enough, whereas sharing information is strictly dominated if types are...

A large empirical literature found that the correlation between insurance purchase and ex post realization of risk is often statistically insignificant or negative. This is inconsistent with the predictions from the classic models of insurance a la Akerlof (1970), Pauly (1974) and Rothschild and...

This paper explores the optimal design of biased contests. A designer imposes an identity-dependent treatment on contestants, which varies the balance of the playing field. A generalized lottery contest typically yields no closed-form equilibrium solutions, which nullifies the usual implicit...