American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Asymmetric Contests with Conditional Investments
American Economic Review
vol. 100,
no. 5, December 2010
(pp. 2230–60)
Abstract
This paper studies equilibrium behavior in a class of games that models asymmetric competitions with unconditional and conditional investments. Such competitions include lobbying settings, labor-market tournaments, and R& races, among others. I provide an algorithm that constructs the unique equilibrium in these games and apply it to study competitions in which a fraction of each competitor's investment is sunk and the rest is paid only by the winners. Complete-information all-pay auctions are a special case. (JEL D44, D72, D82)Citation
Siegel, Ron. 2010. "Asymmetric Contests with Conditional Investments." American Economic Review 100 (5): 2230–60. DOI: 10.1257/aer.100.5.2230Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D44 Auctions
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information