We seek to answer whether handicaps can restore optimal effort provision by agents in heterogeneous contests. To this end, we study data from swimming relay competitions where swimmers with heterogeneous abilities inherit leads or lags from their previous team members. Inheriting a lead or lag...

This paper presents novel evidence for the prevalence of deviations from rational behavior in human decision making – and for the corresponding causes and consequences. The analysis is based on move-by-move data from chess tournaments and an identification strategy that compares behavior of...

An important question in markets with asymmetric information is why in practice fewer sellers voluntarily disclose their private information than theory would predict. To better understand this discrepancy, I use data from an online self-publishing platform to examine the empirical relationship...

This paper studies coalition formation among individuals who differ in productivity. The output of a coalition is determined by the sum of productivities if the coalition exceeds a minimal threshold of members. We consider competitive societies in which the surplus of a coalition is split...

This paper introduces a contest model in which each player decides when to stop a privately observed Brownian motion with drift and incurs costs depending on his stopping time. The player who stops his process at the highest value wins a prize. Applications of the model include procurement...