In many situations the individuals who can generate some output must enter a contest for appropriating this output. This paper analyses the investment incentives of such agents and the role of incumbency advantages in the contest. Depending on the advantages, an increase in the productivity of...

Incomplete information is a commitment device for time consistency problems. In the context of time consistent labor income taxation privacy can lead to a Pareto superior outcome and increases the effectiveness of public education as a second best policy.

Altruists and envious people who meet in contests are symbionts. They do better than a population of narrowly rational individuals. If there are only altruists and envious individuals, a particular mixture of altruists and envious individuals is evolutionarily stable.

We study the role of information exchange through alliances in a framework with contestants who have binding budget limits and know their own budget limit but are incompletely informed about other contestants' budget limits. First, we solve for the Bayesian Nash equilibrium. Then we consider the...

Incomplete information is a commitment device for time consistency problems. In the context of time consistent labor income taxation privacy can lead to a Pareto superior outcome and increases the effectiveness of public education as a second best policy.