Resource allocation contests: Experimental evidence

Resource Allocation Contests: Experimental Evidence

Across many forms of rent seeking contests, the impact of risk aversion on equilibrium play is indeterminate. We design an experiment to compare individuals’ decisions across three contests which are isomorphic under risk-neutrality, but are typically not isomorphic under other risk preferences. The pattern of individual play across our contests is not consistent with a Bayes-Nash equilibrium f...

Modelling Animal Behaviour in Contests: Conventions for Resource Allocation

Auctions or Contests ? Resource allocation under strategic uncertainty

We compare methods to allocate resources or operator licenses in industries where the future value of the resource is unknown at the time of allocation as it depends on ex-post joint actions of operators. For example, the value of radio spectrum licenses may depend on ex-post investments into infrastructure development by the operators. Some countries consider infrastructure development among t...

Contests with group size uncertainty: Experimental evidence

In many contest situations, the number of participants is not observable at the time of investment. We design a laboratory experiment to study individual behavior in Tullock (lottery) contests with group size uncertainty. There is a fixed pool of n potential players, each with independent probability q ∈ (0, 1] of participating. As shown by Lim and Matros (2009; Games and Economic Behavior, vol...

Experimental evidence on the effects of innovation contests

Economic research on innovation has long discussed which policy instruments best foster innovativeness in individuals and organizations. One of the instruments easily accessible to policy-makers is innovation contests; however, there is ambiguous empirical evidence concerning how such contests should be designed. Our experimental study provides evidence by analyzing the effects of two different...