竞赛中的最优奖励:一个拍卖分析框架

本文在全支付(all-pay)拍卖的框架下,研究了一类非对称竞赛活动的最优奖励问题。我们假设竞赛组织者未知参赛者的成本信息,进而可供选择的奖励方式有两种,其一是固定奖励额;其二是线性奖励,最终奖励额由参赛者的投资内生决定。我们证明:如果投资不能完全披露成本信息,固定奖励优于线性奖励;如果投资完全披露成本信息,线性奖励可能优于固定奖励,同时我们得出了实现投资完全披露信息的一个必要条件。我们的结论不依赖于参赛者的对称性假设,不依赖于参赛者具体的成本分布函数形式,也不依赖于竞赛组织者试图最大化参赛者最大努力或最大化所有参赛者努力总和。

BEST PRIZE ALLOCATION IN CONTESTS:AN AUCTION-BASED FRAMEWORK

This paper studies the optimal allocation of prizes in an asymmetric contest under the framework of all-pay auctions.We assume that the contest organizer does not know the contestants' costs.He can use a fixed prize scheme or a linear prize scheme in which the prize depends on the contestants' investment.We prove that the fixed prize scheme is better than the linear prize scheme if the investment can not completely reveal the contestants' costs and the linear prize scheme may be better than the fixed prize ...