We consider multi-stage elimination contests, where agents efforts at different stages generate some output for the organizers. Depending on the output function we characterize the optimal prize structure of the tournament and show that it is almost efficient. We have found that in some cases...

Participants of dynamic competition games may prefer to play with the rules of the game by systematically withholding e¤ort in the beginning. Such behavior is referred to as sandbagging. I consider a two-period con- test between heterogeneous players and analyze potential sandbagging of...

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...

We analyze the optimal choice of risk in a two-stage tournament game between two players that have different concave utility functions. At the first stage, both players simultaneously choose risk. At the second stage, both observe overall risk and simultaneously decide on effort or investment....

In this paper, we study the potential implications of a novel yet natural voting system: strategic sequential voting. Each voter has one vote and can choose when to cast his vote. After each voting period, the current count of votes is publicized enabling subsequent voters to use this...

We characterize strategy sets that are closed under rational behavior (curb) in extensive games of perfect information and finite horizon. It is shown that any such game possesses only one minimal curb set, which necessarily includes all its subgame perfect Nash equilibria. Applications of this...

Battigalli and Siniscalchi (2002) formalize the idea of forward induction reasoning as "rationality and common strong belief of rationality" (RCSBR). Here, we study the behavioral implications of RCSBR across all type structures. Formally, we show that RCSBR is characterized by a solution...

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 extend Kuhn's Theorem to extensive games with unawareness. This extension is not entirely obvious: First, extensive games with non-trivial unawareness involve a forest of partially ordered game trees rather than just one game tree. An information set at a history in one tree may consist of...

We examine the fairness and intensity of sequential round-robin tournaments with multiple prizes. With three symmetric players and two prizes, the tournament is completely fair if and only if the second prize is valued half of the first prize, regardless of whether matches are organized as...