Winner's effort in multi-battle team contests

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Barbieri, Stefano; Serena, Marco
• 署名单位: Tulane University; CUNEF Universidad
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2024.04.006
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 526-556
• 关键词: Team contest; Winner's effort; Temporal structures; Team-asymmetry effect; Stochastic-effort effect

摘要

In multi-battle team contests with pairwise battles, how battles are organized-sequentially or (partially) simultaneously-may affect the expected winner's total effort ( WE ), a natural objective in R&D races, elections, and sports. We focus on noise (modeled via the contest success function's discriminatory power) and across-team heterogeneity, abstracting from player-specific heterogeneity. With sufficient noise, we show that: (1) If teams are symmetric, all temporal structures yield the same WE ; and (2) If teams are asymmetric, WE is maximized by a fully simultaneous contest and minimized by a fully sequential one. With no noise, we show that: (3) If teams are symmetric, WE is maximized by a fully sequential contest and minimized by a fully simultaneous one; and (4) If teams are asymmetric, neither the fully sequential nor the fully simultaneous temporal structures maximize or minimize WE . Our results use a novel technique that simplifies temporal structure comparisons: extractions and mergers.