Contest Architecture with Public Disclosures

Abstract

I study optimal disclosure policies in sequential contests. A contest designer chooses at which periods to publicly disclose the efforts of previous contestants. I provide results for a wide range of possible objectives for the contest designer. While different objectives involve different trade-offs, I show that under many circumstances the optimal contest is one of the three basic contest structures widely studied in the literature: simultaneous, first-mover, or sequential contest.

Keywords: contests, sequential games, contest design, rent-seeking, R&D, advertising

JEL Classification: C72, C73, D72, D82