Learning the Type of the Opponent in Imperfectly Discriminating Contests with Asymmetric Information

Learning the Type of the Opponent in Imperfectly Discriminating Contests with Asymmetric Information
Author: Ganna Pogrebna
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

In a competitive environment players often face uncertainty about the relative strength of their opponents. This paper considers a winner-take-all rent-seeking contest between two players with different costs of effort. Costs of effort are private knowledge, however, players have an opportunity to learn the opponent's type by engaging in either private (the opponent does not know about the information acquisition) or public (the opponent knows about the information acquisition) learning. We show that a situation, when one player learns the type of the opponent privately while the opponent abstains from learning cannot be an equilibrium. Yet, there exists an equilibrium, when one player engages in public learning and the other refrains from learning.

Participation in Contests with Asymmetric Information

Participation in Contests with Asymmetric Information
Author: Karl Warneryd
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre:
ISBN:

We consider imperfectly discriminating, common-value, all-pay auctions (or contests) where some players know the value of the prize, others do not. We show that if the prize is always of positive value, then all players are active in equilibrium. If the prize is of value zero with positive probability, then there is some threshold number of informed players such that if there are less, all uninformed players are active, and otherwise all uninformed players are inactive.

Economic Ideas You Should Forget

Economic Ideas You Should Forget
Author: Bruno S. Frey
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2017-03-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319474588

Reporting on cutting-edge advances in economics, this book presents a selection of commentaries that reveal the weaknesses of several core economics concepts. Economics is a vigorous and progressive science, which does not lose its force when particular parts of its theory are empirically invalidated; instead, they contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. By discussing problematic theoretical assumptions and drawing on the latest empirical research, the authors question specific hypotheses and reject major economic ideas from the “Coase Theorem” to “Say’s Law” and “Bayesianism.” Many of these ideas remain prominent among politicians, economists and the general public. Yet, in the light of the financial crisis, they have lost both their relevance and supporting empirical evidence. This fascinating and thought-provoking collection of 71 short essays written by respected economists and social scientists from all over the world will appeal to anyone interested in scientific progress and the further development of economics.

Contest Theory

Contest Theory
Author: Milan Vojnović
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2016-02-04
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1316472906

Contests are prevalent in many areas, including sports, rent seeking, patent races, innovation inducement, labor markets, scientific projects, crowdsourcing and other online services, and allocation of computer system resources. This book provides unified, comprehensive coverage of contest theory as developed in economics, computer science, and statistics, with a focus on online services applications, allowing professionals, researchers and students to learn about the underlying theoretical principles and to test them in practice. The book sets contest design in a game-theoretic framework that can be used to model a wide-range of problems and efficiency measures such as total and individual output and social welfare, and offers insight into how the structure of prizes relates to desired contest design objectives. Methods for rating the skills and ranking of players are presented, as are proportional allocation and similar allocation mechanisms, simultaneous contests, sharing utility of productive activities, sequential contests, and tournaments.

The Handbook of Experimental Economics

The Handbook of Experimental Economics
Author: John H. Kagel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 742
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691213259

This book, which comprises eight chapters, presents a comprehensive critical survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics. The first chapter provides an introduction to experimental economics as a whole, with the remaining chapters providing surveys by leading practitioners in areas of economics that have seen a concentration of experiments: public goods, coordination problems, bargaining, industrial organization, asset markets, auctions, and individual decision making. The work aims both to help specialists set an agenda for future research and to provide nonspecialists with a critical review of work completed to date. Its focus is on elucidating the role of experimental studies as a progressive research tool so that wherever possible, emphasis is on series of experiments that build on one another. The contributors to the volume--Colin Camerer, Charles A. Holt, John H. Kagel, John O. Ledyard, Jack Ochs, Alvin E. Roth, and Shyam Sunder--adopt a particular methodological point of view: the way to learn how to design and conduct experiments is to consider how good experiments grow organically out of the issues and hypotheses they are designed to investigate.

Animal Contests

Animal Contests
Author: Ian C. W. Hardy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2013-05-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1107244390

Contests are an important aspect of the lives of diverse animals, from sea anemones competing for space on a rocky shore to fallow deer stags contending for access to females. Why do animals fight? What determines when fights stop and which contestant wins? Addressing fundamental questions on contest behaviour, this volume presents theoretical and empirical perspectives across a range of species. The historical development of contest research, the evolutionary theory of both dyadic and multiparty contests, and approaches to experimental design and data analysis are discussed in the first chapters. This is followed by reviews of research in key animal taxa, from the use of aerial displays and assessment rules in butterflies and the developmental biology of weapons in beetles, through to interstate warfare in humans. The final chapter considers future directions and applications of contest research, making this a comprehensive resource for both graduate students and researchers in the field.

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests
Author: Herbert Gintis
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262072526

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of disguised self-interest but from the presence of "strong reciprocators" in a social group. Presenting an overview of research in economics, anthropology, evolutionary and human biology, social psychology, and sociology, the book deals with both the theoretical foundations and the policy implications of this explanation for cooperation. Chapter authors in the remaining parts of the book discuss the behavioral ecology of cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates, modeling and testing strong reciprocity in economic scenarios, and reciprocity and social policy. The evidence for strong reciprocity in the book includes experiments using the famous Ultimatum Game (in which two players must agree on how to split a certain amount of money or they both get nothing.)