Designing Contests Between Heterogeneous Contestants: An Experimental Study of Tie-Breaks and Bid-Caps in All-Pay Auctions*

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases investments of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Levelling the playing field by favouring weaker contestants through strict bid-caps and favourable tie-breaking rules can reduce discouragement and increase the designer\u27s revenue. We test these predictions in a laboratory experiment. Our data confirm that placing bid-caps and using favourable tie-breaking rules significantly diminishes discouragement of weaker contestants. However, its impact on revenues is muted by the fact that the encouragement of weaker contestants is offset by stronger contestants competing less aggressively, even when not predicted by theory. We discuss deviations from the Nash predictions in light of different behavioural approaches

Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases investments of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Levelling the playing field by favouring weaker contestants through strict bid-caps and favourable tie-breaking rules can reduce discouragement and increase the designer\u27s revenue. We test these predictions in a laboratory experiment. Our data confirm that placing bid-caps and using favourable tie-breaking rules significantly diminishes discouragement of weaker contestants. However, its impact on revenues is muted by the fact that the encouragement of weaker contestants is offset by stronger contestants competing less aggressively, even when not predicted by theory. We discuss deviations from the Nash predictions in light of different behavioural approaches

Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases performance of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Leveling the playing field by favoring weaker contestants through bid-caps and favorable tie-breaking rules can reduce the discouragement effect and increase the designer’s revenue. We test these predictions in an experiment. Our data show that indeed, strengthening weaker contestants through tie-breaks and bid-caps significantly diminishes the iscouragement effect. Bid-caps can also improve revenue. Most deviations from Nash equilibrium can be explained by the level-k model of reasoning

The Pros and Cons of Workplace Tournaments

Tournaments are commonly used in the workplace to determine promotion, assign bonuses, and motivate personal development. Tournament-based contracts can be very effective in eliciting high effort, often outperforming other compensation contracts, but they can also have negative consequences for both managers and workers. The benefits and disadvantages of workplace tournaments have been identified in theoretical, empirical, and experimental research over the past several decades. Based on these findings, I provide suggestions and guidelines for when it might be beneficial to use tournaments in the workplace

The Pros and Cons of Workplace Tournaments

Tournaments are commonly used in the workplace to determine promotion, assign bonuses, and motivate personal development. Tournament-based contracts can be very effective in eliciting high effort, often outperforming other compensation contracts, but they can also have negative consequences for both managers and workers. The benefits and disadvantages of workplace tournaments have been identified in theoretical, empirical, and experimental research over the past several decades. Based on these findings, I provide suggestions and guidelines for when it might be beneficial to use tournaments in the workplace

Experimental Research on Contests

Costly competitions between economic agents are modeled as contests. Researchers use laboratory experiments to study contests and test comparative static predictions of contest theory. Commonly, researchers find that participants’ efforts are significantly higher than predicted by the standard Nash equilibrium. Despite overbidding, most comparative static predictions, such as the incentive effect, the size effect, the discouragement effect and others are supported in the laboratory. In addition, experimental studies examine various contest structures, including dynamic contests (such as multi-stage races, wars of attrition, tug-of-wars), multi-dimensional contests (such as Colonel Blotto games), and contests between groups. This article provides a short review of such studies

Analysis of stochastic technical trading algorithms

We apply the well-known CUSUM, the Girshick-Rubin, the Graversen-Peskir-Shiryaev and an improved alteration of the Brodsky-Darkovsky algorithm as trading strategies involving only mutually exclusive long positions in cash and the DAX at Xetra intraday auction prices. We select optimal pairs of fixed thresholds for up- and downmovements from a pre-defined two-dimensional grid, hence, admitting asymmetric intervals. We show that under three different scenarios for transaction costs, the improved Brodsky-Darkovsky technique not only outperforms the passive investment in the DAX but also the other three presented algorithms

Experimental research on contests

Contests are situations in which agents compete by irreversibly expending costly resources in an attempt to win a prize. Due to their applications in conflict, rent-seeking, organizational incentives, sports, litigation, and political campaigns, contests are widely applied in the social sciences. In this survey we summarize some main results and recent developments of experimental studies in contest theory. We also point out their broader applications in the social sciences

A field experiment on crowdfunding for a club good

While increasingly popular in many domains crowdfunding remains largely un-derresearched and little is known about the best way to encourage participation. In a field experiment we vary suggested amounts and test different wordings for a campaign to finance a club good - an institute's summer party with free food, drinks, and music. We find that higher suggestions shift the median and the mode of gifts from €5 to €10 at a similar response rate. We also find evidence in favor of a "donation" frame that generates higher income than a "contribution" frame