In this paper, we consider a symmetric rent-seeking contest, where employees lobby for a governmental contract on behalf of firms. The only verifiable information is which firm is assigned the contract. We derive the optimal wage contracts of the employees and analyze, whether commitment by...

In this paper a tournament between teams (a collective tournament) is analyzed, where each contestant may spend productive effort in order to increase his team's performance or sabotage the members of the opponent team. It is shown that sabotaging the weaker members of a team always decreases...

In this paper, .rms engage in rent seeking in order to be assigned a governmental contract. We analyze how a change in the contract length a¤ects the .rms. rent-seeking behavior. A longer contract leads to more rent seeking at a contract assignment stage, as the .rms value the contract higher....

In this paper, a promotion tournament is considered, where, at the beginning of the tournament, it is unknown how long the tournament lasts. Further, the promotion decision is based on the assessments of a supervisor with imperfect recall. In line with psychological research, the supervisor is...

This paper addresses the selection problem in promotion tournaments. I consider a situation with heterogeneous employees and ask whether an employer might be interested in repeating a promotion tournament. On the one hand, this yields a reduction in uncertainty over the employees’...

In this paper, a formal rent-seeking theory of the firm is developed. The main idea is that integration (compared to non-integration) facilitates rent-seeking for the integrating party, but makes it harder for the integrated one. In a one-period model, this implies that the rent-seeking contest...

Individuals faced by a tournament can oftentimes not only choose their effort level, but also the risk level of their strategy. There are some theoretical contributions on risk taking in tournaments, which mainly point out disadvantages with respect to exerted effort. Empirical evidence is rare....

This paper addresses the selection problem in promotion tournaments. I consider a situation with heterogeneous employees and ask whether an employer might be interested in repeating a promotion tournament. On the one hand, this yields a reduction in uncertainty over the employees` abilities. On...

This paper studies sabotage in a dynamic tournament. Three players compete in two rounds. In the final round, a player who is leading in the race, but not yet beyond the reach of his competitors, is sabotaged more heavily. As a consequence, if all players start off at the same position, they do...