Logo
Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Mediated Contests and Strategic Foundations for Contest Success Functions

Pelosse, Yohan (2009): Mediated Contests and Strategic Foundations for Contest Success Functions.

[thumbnail of MPRA_paper_18664.pdf]
Preview
PDF
MPRA_paper_18664.pdf

Download (233kB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper examines the foundations of arbitrary contest success functions (CSFs) in two distinct types of contests – unmediated and mediated contests. In an unmediated contest, CSFs arise as the (interim) players’ equilibrium beliefs of a two-stage game – the gun-butter game – in which players choose an activity (appropriative vs. productive) in the first stage, and apply effort to their activity in the second stage. In this view a CSF is rationalizable if a contest is induced on the equilibrium path of the gun-butter game. In the second approach, a CSF is the result of the optimal design of an administrator. Here, the designer seeks to maximize his utility by implementing a probability distribution on the set of contestants. However, he is curbed by a disutility term which represents the underlying institutional constraints or the designer’s preferences. Both approaches provide foundations for arbitrary CSFs with no restrictions on the number of contestants.

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact us: mpra@ub.uni-muenchen.de

This repository has been built using EPrints software.

MPRA is a RePEc service hosted by Logo of the University Library LMU Munich.