Biased contests for symmetric players

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Drugov, Mikhail; Ryvkin, Dmitry
• 署名单位: New Economic School; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; State University System of Florida; Florida State University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.02.003
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 116-144
• 关键词: Biased contest; Biased contest success function; Aggregate effort; Predictive power; Winner's effort

摘要

In a biased contest, one of the players has an advantage in the winner determination process. We characterize a novel class of biased contest success functions pertaining to such contests and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for zero bias to be a critical point of arbitrary objectives satisfying certain symmetry restrictions. We, however, challenge the common wisdom that unbiased contests are always optimal when contestants are symmetric ex ante or even ex post. We show that contests with arbitrary favorites, i.e., biased contests of symmetric players, can be optimal in terms of various objectives such as expected aggregate effort, the probability to reveal the stronger player as the winner or expected effort of the winner. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.