This paper studies a large class of imperfectly discriminating contests, referred to as elastic contests, that induce players to either overbid a standing bid or to abstain from bidding altogether. Many common forms of contest are elastic. In any equilibrium of an elastic contest, there is...

This paper considers rent-seeking games in which a small percentage change in a player's bid has a large percentage impact on her odds of winning, i.e., on the ratio of her respective probabilities of winning and losing. An example is the Tullock contest with a high R. The analysis provides a...

The axiomatic route to the foundation of contest success functions (CSF) has proved to be both useful and prolific. The standard approach in the literature is based on the decision-theoretic notion that choice probabilities should be independent of irrelevant alternatives (Skaperdas, Economic...

It is shown that the n-player lottery contest admits a best-response potential (Voorneveld, 2000, Economics Letters). This is true also when the contest technology reflects the possibility of a draw. The result implies, in particular, the existence of a nontrivial example of a strictly...

In a canonical model of military conflict, victory and defeat depend stochastically on the difference of resources deployed by the conflict parties. The present paper offers a comprehensive analysis of that model. The unique Nash equilibrium reflects either (i) peace, (ii) submission, (iii)...