Endogenous coalition formation in contests

This paper analyzes coalition formation in a model of contests with linear costs. Agents first form groups and then compete by investing resources. Coalitions fight for a prize that is assumed to be subject to rivalry, so its value is non-increasing in the size of the group that obtains it. This formulation encompasses as particular cases some models proposed in the rent-seeking literature. We show that the formation of groups generates positive spillovers and analyze two classes of games of coalition formation. A contest among individual agents is the only stable outcome when individual defections leave the rest of the group intact. More concentrated coalition structures, including the grand coalition, are stable when groups collapse after a defection, provided that rivalry is not too strong. Results in a sequential game of coalition formation suggest that there exists a non-monotonic relationship between the level of underlying rivalry and the level of social conflict.

“If men were supplied with every thing in the same abundance, justice and injustice would be equally unknown among mankind.” David Hume (1740), A Treatise of Human Nature

I thank Luis Corchón, Joan Esteban, Michelle Garfinkel and József Sákovics for their comments and suggestions on the paper.     

Evolutionary stability of altruism and envy in Tullock contests

This paper considers Tullock contests with altruistic and envious individuals as players. Altruism (envy) is beheld as another motivation for low (high) dissipation rates in contests. A pure population of altruists has higher payoffs than a purely envious population, but the altruist has a lower payoff if he is confronted with an envious individual. In an evolutionary approach in which the population share of the type with the higher material payoff rises, it can be shown that there is a possibility of either envy or altruism becoming extinct. Furthermore, we find an advantage of envy in such a manner that very altruistic individuals always die out, but very envious ones only do so under certain conditions. I am grateful to Alexander Haupt, two anonymous referees, and the editor for constructive comments on this paper.     

Discrimination in contests: a survey

The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive answer to some fundamental questions related to discrimination within the context of contests. For example, what forms of discrimination are possible? Can discrimination be justified? What mode of discrimination is expected? Does discrimination necessarily result in the elimination of polarization? How effective are the different modes of discrimination in inducing efforts (revenue)? How do the most widely studied contests based on an all-pay-auction and on a lottery compare under different modes of discrimination? Applying a contest-design approach, we examine four alternative types of discrimination that can be selected by a contest designer who maximizes the contestants’ efforts (his revenue). Our survey focuses on the leading principles of the separate and joint effective application of the alternative modes of direct, overt covert and head starts-discrimination that are assumed to be exercised under the widely studied family of (logit) contest success functions (CSFs). Whereas direct discrimination refers to differential taxation of the contested prize subject to a balanced-budget constraint, overt, covert and head starts-discrimination relate to structural discrimination that involves the parameters of the CSF. While the direct mode of discrimination is legally feasible, the structural modes of discrimination are more subtle and more difficult to implement and, sometimes, may even involve legal barriers.     

Innovation contests with temporary and endogenous monopoly rents

In this article, a Tullock contest success function is used to model an innovation contest with endogenous innovation height. We can prove stability for this endogenous prize contest. The winner of the contest gains a monopoly rent, which has two dimensions. In the first dimension the winning firm influences the innovation height. The second dimension is the life span of the temporary monopoly. This life span is determined by the contest designer, who can be asocial planner or the consumers. We find interior solutions in both cases, whereas consumers prefer a monopoly life span below the social optimum. Furthermore, the optimal number of firms in the contest is two.     

A model of strategic delegation in contests between groups

We analyze a contest between two groups where group members have differing valuations for the contested rent. Generically the pivotal group member with the median valuation of the rent will not act himself but will want to send a group member that has preferences different to her own into the contest. The delegation can be either to more or less “radical” group members. The direction of delegation depends on the order of moves and the relative “aggressiveness” of the group medians. We show that almost certainly very asymmetric equilibria arise, even if the median group members value the rent (almost) equally. Delegation can lead to a social improvement in terms of resources spent in the contest. We are indebted to Tobias Boehm, Nicolas Klein, Kai Konrad, Dan Kovenock, Matthias Messner, Johannes Muenster, Ray Rees, Hans Zenger and seminar participants at the 2005 Meeting of the Public Choice Society, the European Public Choice Society, the Royal Economic Society, the WZB Berlin, and the Universities of Guelph and Munich for their comments and suggestions. The editor, Massimo Morelli, and an anonymous referee helped to substantially improve the paper.     

On evolutionarily stable behavior in contests

It is argued in this paper that the solution concept of an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) is an adequate analysis tool for contest theory. Moreover, it is shown that in a contest ESS always differs from Nash equilibrium, the hitherto dominant solution concept in contest theory. Finally, an interpretation of finite population ESS contest behavior in terms of Nash behavior is supplied.Received: 10 February 2002, Accepted: 8 July 2002, JEL Classification: C79, D72, D 74Wolfgang Leininger: I have benefited from the comments and suggestions of Burkhard Hehenkamp and two anonymous referees.     

大学生数学建模竞赛在能力培养中的作用

文章介绍了全国大学生数学建模竞赛,分析了数学建模的一般步骤和讨论了大学生数学建模竞赛在能力培养中的作用。     

Equivalence of optimal noisy-ranking contests and Tullock contests

We analyze a noisy-ranking contest in which participants compete in several dimensions. The organizer randomly samples a number of dimensions and awards a prize to the most productive agent. When the contest is optimally designed, we establish a structural equivalence between this family of noisy-ranking contests and contests built upon Tullock contest success functions. Our result also shows that in this class of noisy-contests, the profit-maximization problem of the planner can be turned into a stochastic choice problem for a planner who has some deterministic preferences over the contestants’ win probabilities.     

The disposition effect: a survey

The disposition effect is a well-recognized behavioral economic phenomenon which has been studied in numerous papers during the last three decades. Besides a literature review of the major theoretical, empirical, and experimental papers, the body of academic literature is subjected to a bibliometric analysis where all papers are taken into account which can be found via the search engine “EBSCOhost” (589 hits). This paper not only extensively describes the state of the art of research on the topic of the disposition effect. The combination of insights from a content analysis as well as a bibliometric analysis serves as a case study on the pattern of diffusion of research hypotheses and research methods. For example, it can be shown that the number of publications per year on the disposition effect remained relatively low subsequent to its discovery and only later started to substantially grow over time. On the other hand, the quality of papers, as approximated by the share of “A” journal articles per year, decreased over time.     

The expert problem: a survey

The survey is focused on the typical problems in information transmission from experts to non-experts. Attention is paid to the factors that can affect information disclosure in models that apply a game-theoretic approach to the use of professional advice. In the economic literature expertise is mainly analyzed as a special case of asymmetric information between expert and non-expert. The contributions are reviewed according to a double criterion, that takes into account both the preferences of the experts and the properties of communication. On one side, either the non-expert plays the role of a decision-maker, who chooses an action that is payoff-relevant for the expert, or the preferences of the expert directly depend on some measure of his reputation as a high-ability forecaster. On the other side, communication can range from pure cheap talk to completely verifiable messages.     

Multi-period rent-seeking contests with carryover: Theory and experimental evidence

This paper develops and experimentally tests a model in which a players effort affects the probability of winning a contest in both the current and future periods. Theory predicts that rent-seeking effort will be shifted forward from later to earlier periods, with no change in overall rent-seeking expenditures relative to the static contest. Experimental results indicate a significant shift forward when carryover is present and that the amount shifted is directly related to the carryover rate. Finally, although experimental expenditures are greater than the equilibrium predictions, overall rent-seeking effort in the carryover contests is lower than in similar static contests.Received: 15 September 2003, Accepted: 15 June 2004 JEL Classification: D72, C91 Correspondence to: JohnCadigan     

The behavioral justification for public pensions: a survey

Unfunded public pension systems are primarily justified on grounds that many individuals lack sufficient capacity to appropriately save for retirement. We begin with a review of the known principle that a standard life-cycle/permanent-income consumer who discounts the future at an exponential rate can benefit from an unfunded public pension system only if the internal rate of return exceeds the private rate of return. However, a pay-as-you-go program with a below market internal rate can in fact improve lifetime utility if the consumer misestimates social security benefits, uses a hyperbolic discount function rather than the exponential function, uses a short planning horizon, behaves impulsively, or if a fraction of the population do no saving at all. A literature has consequently arisen to study how severe these behavioral defects need to be in order to justify a pay-as-you-go program. We survey this literature, and we conclude that the results are highly mixed as to whether an unfunded public pension that earns a below-market internal rate of return can be justified on grounds of shortsightedness in model economies. The challenge for this literature is that the conclusions crucially depend on the particular values of the preference parameters that are used in the simulation experiments, and these preference parameters are not observable, nor is there much consensus concerning the values that should be used in simulations. In fact, even when the analysis is confined to a small and reasonable space of the unobservable preference parameters, it is possible to reach nearly any policy conclusion. We offer some guidance for future work in this area.

The impact of proxy contests on managerial turnover: A test of the job security hypothesis

This paper provides a test of the effect of proxy contests on managerial job security. We investigate senior executive turnover rates in the presence/absence of proxy fights associated with listed companies in Taiwan during the period 1984–91. The findings demonstrate that top management turnover is closely related to the incidence of proxy fights, lending support to the job security hypothesis.     

企业冲突管理的博弈分析

冲突管理作为一种现代企业管理方法,其应用提高了企业的管理效率,降低了生产成本,同时也带来了冲突本身所产生的负面效应。本文基于对冲突管理内涵的剖析与解释,运用博弈论的分析方法,从企业组织的两个层面入手,对员工之间、部门之间冲突的产生以及均衡形成的机理与过程进行了描述与分析,并提出企业管理者对于冲突的认知、设计、监控、处理、反馈的系统管理框架。     

基于信息化教学大赛的信息化教学设计探讨

信息化教学大赛是职业教育领域的一项主要制度,是以现代信息技术带动职业教育现代化的重要举措.本文在介绍信息化教学设计的重要意义的基础上,提出信息化教学设计的理念策略,以工程造价专业“给排水工程量的计算”为例,详细阐述了信息化教学设计的具体内容,并提出迸一步探讨的方向.     

Rationality, Ethnicity And Institutions: A Survey Of Issues And Results

Abstract.  This paper focuses on the relationship between institutions and ethnocentrism as discussed in the rational choice literature. The institutional environment can influence both the formation and the expression of ethnic tastes by rational individuals. Ethnocentrism is likely to be mitigated by, on the one hand, a private sector characterized by a wide and competitive market with effective property right and antitrust law enforcement provided by non-ethnic institutions and, on the other hand, a public sector which is characterized by institutional restrictions on the differential fiscal or regulatory treatment on the basis of ethnicity, a redistributive system based on non-ethnic criteria and finally, the possibility for decentralized collective decision making. These insights may be of particular utility when designing the institutions of potentially divided multi-ethnic states.     

环境群体性事件的发生、成因及其治理研究

环境群体性事件的频繁爆发已经成为我国社会转型过程中所面临的突出问题.从环境污染到群体性事件爆发是一个涉及政府、民众及企业等多方主体动态博弈的过程.论文通过对环境群体性事件诸多环节的分析,描述了环境群体性事件从矛盾积累、矛盾激化,再到冲突爆发的一般过程,分析了环境群体性事件演进过程背后利益失衡、政府不当行为、制度缺失等诸多因素.治理环境群体性事件,需要从理念、制度,以及操作措施上下大功夫.     

产业内贸易与服务贸易竞争力关系理论综述

随着经济的发展,产业内贸易、服务贸易在今天的社会生活中变得日益重要,产业内贸易的发展对推动服务贸易的发展,提高服务贸易国际竞争力的作用也越来越得到人们的关注。文章分别对产业内贸易、服务贸易竞争力及涉及其两者间关系的理论进行梳理总结。     

会计政策选择的经济后果博弈分析

本文认为,会计政策选择对财务报表的各种使用者具有经济后果。由于信息不对称而形成的逆向选择和道德风险的存在,使得企业内部管理者可以通过会计政策选择来损害外部投资者利益。在经济后果范围内将信息披露问题,利用博弈理论在管理者与投资者之间进行分析非常重要。研究发现,在存在不利经济后果时,由于信息不对称产生的负面效果使得博弈双方走入了“囚徒的困境“。     

Unemployment and self-employment: a survey

The currently high level of unemployment emphasises the importance (in policy terms) of the potential contribution of a self employment alternative. Here the author examines the available UK evidence on the degree of movement from unemployment to self employment, the factors influencing this movement and the role of labour market information and training.