A hierarchically structured rent-seeking contest may be associated with lower equilibrium expenditure than a corresponding flat contest. In this chapter we discuss how this fact may be used to explain the structure of organizations such as firms, including why firms commonly have outside owners.

A hierarchically structured rent-seeking contest may be associated with lower equilibrium expenditure than a corresponding flat contest. In this chapter we discuss how this fact may be used to explain the structure of organizations such as firms, including why firms commonly have outside owners.

We consider contestants who must choose exactly one contest, out of several, to participate in. We show that when the contest technology is of a certain type, or when the number of contestants is large, a self-allocation equilibrium, i.e., one where no contestant would wish to change his choice...

We consider Bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational mechanisms for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. We model the default option of outright conflict as a probabilistic contest. Examples of such contests may be...

A hierarchically structured rent-seeking contest may be associated with lower equilibrium expenditure than a corresponding flat contest. In this chapter we discuss how this fact may be used to explain the structure of organizations such as firms, including why firms commonly have outside owners.

We study the evolution of an economy where agents who are heterogeneous with respect to risk attitudes can either earn a certain income or enter a risky rent-seeking contest. We assume that agents behave rationally given their preferences, but that the population distribution of preferences...

This paper studies strategic delegation in two-player contests for an indivisible prize (as in, e.g. litigation) where one party's probability of winning is determined by the relative investments of both. Even though neither player stands to gain anything from the possibility of one player...

In a first-price all-pay auction buyers have an incentive to delegate the bidding to agents and to provide these agents with incentives to make bids that differ from the bids the buyers would like to make. Both buyers are better off in this strictly non-cooperative delegation equilibrium and the...

The paper explores the implications for explaining the endogenous formation of jurisdictions of modelling the political process as a costly fight to acquire shares of the GNP pie. It is shown, in particular, that a system of federalism is especially significant in ameliorating distributional...