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...

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...

WHAT IS the most immediate tool of empowerment you can provide a person? Ask an economist. Or ask a laborer who has been moved to the outskirts of the city as a part of the quot;big-progressive resettlement schemequot;. Or ask a student. The most likely answer you will get is:...

In this paper, a group contest is analyzed, where the groups are allowed to determine their sharing rules either sequentially or simultaneously. It is found that in case the more numerous group determines its sharing rule prior to the smaller group, rent dissipation in the group contest is...

The paper presents experimental evidence on the impact of managers and their incentives on the behavior of group members in intergroup contests. I find that members follow the nonbinding investment recommendations of their group manager in particular if the managers payoff does not depend on the...

This paper develops a model of conflict resolution over scarce water in a trans-boundary river. In our model, we consider countries that are located along a river and made a military investment. Given these investments and their location along the river, they sequentially bargain over the...

We generalize the Tullock Contest Success Function to allow for ties by introducing a tie-proneness parameter to account for the degree of the importance of ties in the contest. The probability of a tie reaches a maximum when the contestants provide similar efforts and it is increasing in the...

This paper presents an axiomatic characterization of difference-form group contests, that is, contests fought among groups and where their probability of victory depends on the difference of their effective efforts. This axiomatization rests on the property of Absolute Consistency, stating that...

I characterize the optimal accuracy level r of an unbiased Tullock contest between two players with heterogeneous prize valuations. The designer maximizes the winning probability of the strong player or the winner’s expected valuation by choosing a contest with an all-pay auction equilibrium...

What explains significant variation across countries in the use of vote buying instead of campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper explicitly models the tradeoff parties face between engaging in vote buying and making campaign promises, and explores the distributional consequences...