Sabotage in Contests: A Survey

A contest is a situation in which individuals expend irretrievable resources to win valuable prize(s). ‘Sabotage’ is a deliberate and costly act of damaging a rival’s' likelihood of winning the contest. Sabotage can be observed in, e.g., sports, war, promotion tournaments, political or marketing campaigns. In this article, we provide a model and various perspectives on such sabotage activities and review the economics literature analyzing the act of sabotage in contests. We discuss the theories and evidence highlighting the means of sabotage, why sabotage occurs, and the effects of sabotage on individual players and on overall welfare, along with possible mechanisms to reduce sabotage. We note that most sabotage activities are aimed at the ablest player, the possibility of sabotage reduces productive effort exerted by the players, and sabotage may lessen the effectiveness of public policies, such as affirmative action, or information revelation in contests. We discuss various policies that a designer may employ to counteract sabotage activities. We conclude by pointing out some areas of future research

Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends on the interplay between technology, relative productivity of agents and the degree of meritocracy. In particular we show that, ceteris paribus, meritocratic systems give more incentives to sabotage than egalitarian systems.Publicad

Incentives for Sabotage in Vertically Related Industries

We show that the incentives a vertically integrated supplier may have to disadvantage or "sabotage" the activities of downstream rivals vary with both the type of sabotage and the nature of downstream competition. Cost-increasing sabotage is typically profitable under both Cournot and Bertrand competition. In contrast, demand-reducing sabotage is often profitable under Cournot competition, but unprofitable under Bertrand competition. Incentives for sabotage can vary non-monotonically with the degree of product differentiation.Regulation, Vertical Integration, Access Pricing, Sabotage

Sabotaging Potential Rivals

This paper studies sabotage in a contest with non-identical players. Unlike previous papers, we consider sabotage in an elimination contest and allow contestants to sabotage a potential or future rival. It turns out that for a certain partition of players there is a pure-strategy equilibrium in which only the most able contestant engages in sabotage while less able contestants do not. The most able contestant may therefore prefer a situation where sabotage is allowed to one where sabotage is not allowed. For another partition of players, there is a unique equilibrium in which none of the players invests in sabotage.all-pay auction, elimination contests, potential rival, sabotage

Sabotage in Tournaments: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

Although relative performance schemes are pervasive in organizations reliable empirical data on induced sabotage behavior is almost non-existent. We study sabotage in tournaments in a controlled laboratory experiment and are able to confirm one of the key insights from theory: effort and sabotage increase with the wage spread. Additionally, we find that even in the presence of tournament incentives, agents react reciprocally to higher wages, which mitigates the sabotage problem. Destructive activities are reduced by explicitly calling them by their name 'sabotage'. Communication among principal and agents curbs sabotage due to agreements on flat prize structures and increased output.sabotage, tournament, reciprocity, relative performance scheme, experiment

Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends on the interplay between technology, relative productivity of agents and the degree of meritocracy. In particular we show that, ceteris paribus, meritocratic systems give more incentives to sabotage than egalitarian systems.Cooperative production, sharing rules, sabotage

Contraceptive Sabotage

This Article responds to the alarm recently sounded by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists over “birth control sabotage”—the “active interference [by one partner] with [the other] partner’s contraceptive methods in an attempt to promote pregnancy.” Currently, sabotage is not a crime, and existing categories of criminal offenses fail to capture the essence of the injury it does to victims. This Article argues that sabotage should be a separate crime—but only when perpetrated against those partners who can and do get pregnant as a result of having sabotaged sex. Using the principle of self-possession—understood as a person’s basic right to self-ownership—this Article argues that women have a self-possessory interest in maintaining their reproductive capacity in its non-pregnant state during and after having sex to the extent they seek to establish with the use or planned use of contraception. Sabotage by sexual partners—typically male—violates this interest and merits criminal punishment. This Article proposes statutory language to criminalize sabotage that should be added to the revision of the Model Penal Code currently underway. Not only would this addition likely survive any Equal Protection challenge, it would arguably serve to strengthen the existing constitutional right to non-procreative sex by setting meaningful limits on one partner’s ability to interfere unilaterally with the other partner’s contraceptive decisions

Selection tournaments, sabotage, and participation

This paper studies sabotage in tournaments with at least three contestants, where the contestants know each other well. Every contestant has an incentive to direct sabotage specifically against his most dangerous rival. In equilibrium, contestants who choose a higher productive effort are sabotaged more heavily. This might explain findings from psychology, where victims of mobbing are sometimes found to be overachieving. Further, sabotage equalizes promotion chances. The effect is most pronounced if the production function is linear in sabotage, and the cost function depends only on the sum of all sabotage activities: in an interior equilibrium, who will win is a matter of chance, even when contestants differ a great deal in their abilities. This, in turn, has adverse consequences for who might want to participate in a tournament. Since better contestants anticipate that they will be sabotaged more strongly, it may happen that the most able stay out and the tournament selects one of the less able with probability one. I also study the case where some contestants are easy victims, i. e. easier to sabotage than others. -- Firmen setzen häufig Anreize, indem sie die Leistung der Mitarbeiter vergleichen, und die erfolgreichsten befördern oder eine Prämie bezahlen. Solche Anreizsysteme werden in der Literatur als Turniere bezeichnet. Da es in einem Turnier nur darauf ankommt, besser zu sein als die Konkurrenten, hat jeder einen Anreiz, seine Konkurrenten zu sabotieren. Dieser Aufsatz studiert Sabotage in Turnieren zwischen mindestens drei Teilnehmern. Jeder hat einen Anreiz, seinen gefährlichsten Gegner am meisten zu sabotieren. Im Gleichgewicht werden diejenigen, die am produktivsten arbeiten, am stärksten sabotiert. Dies mag Forschungsergebnisse aus der Psychologie erklären, in denen sich zeigt, dass die Opfer von Mobbing besonders leistungsorientiert sind. Darüberhinaus führt Sabotage zu einer Angleichung der Gewinnwahrscheinlichkeiten. Der Effekt ist am deutlichsten wenn die Produktionsfunktion linear in Sabotage ist, und die Kostenfunktion nur von der Summe der Sabotageaktivitäten abhängt: In einem inneren Gleichgewicht ist es reiner Zufall, wer gewinnt, auch wenn die Teilnehmer sehr unterschiedliche Fähigkeiten haben. Dies hat auch Rückwirkungen auf die Bereitschaft, an dem Turnier teilzunehmen. Da bessere Spieler voraussehen, dass sie mehr sabotiert werden werden, sind ihre Anreize teilzunehmen unter Umständen geringer als die von weniger fähigen Spielern. Deshalb ist ein Turnier nicht als Auswahlmechanismus geeignet ist, wenn Sabotage eine wichtige Rolle spielt.Tournament,contest,sabotage,selection

Sabotage in Asymmetric Contests – An Experimental Analysis

In a contest players compete for winning a prize by effort and thereby increasing their probability of winning. Contestants, however, could also improve their own relative position by harming the other players. We experimentally analyze contests with heterogeneous agents who may individually sabotage each other. Our results suggest that sabotaging behavior systematically varies with the composition of different types of agents in a contest. Moreover, if the saboteur's identity is revealed sabotage decreases while retaliation motives prevail.Contest, Experiments, Sabotage, Tournament