Winners' Efforts in Multi-Battle Team Contests

76 Pages Posted: 21 Feb 2019 Last revised: 23 Apr 2024

See all articles by Stefano Barbieri

Stefano Barbieri

Tulane University - Department of Economics

Marco Serena

Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros CUNEF

Date Written: January 17, 2019

Abstract

In multi-battle team contests with pairwise battles, how battles are organized---sequentially or (partially) simultaneously---may affect the expected winner's total effort (WE), a natural objective in R&D races, elections, and sports. We focus on noise (modeled via the contest success function's discriminatory power) and across-team heterogeneity, abstracting from player-specific heterogeneity. With sufficient noise, we show that: (1) If teams are symmetric, all temporal structures yield the same WE; and (2) If teams are asymmetric, WE is maximized by a fully simultaneous contest and minimized by a fully sequential one. With no noise, we show that: (3) If teams are symmetric, WE is maximized by a fully sequential contest and minimized by a fully simultaneous one; and (4) If teams are asymmetric, neither the fully sequential nor the fully simultaneous temporal structures maximize or minimize WE. Our results use a novel technique that simplifies temporal structure comparisons: extractions and mergers.

Keywords: team contest, winners' efforts, temporal structures, ordering of battles

JEL Classification: C72, D72, D74, D82

Suggested Citation

Barbieri, Stefano and Serena, Marco, Winners' Efforts in Multi-Battle Team Contests (January 17, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3338359

Stefano Barbieri

Tulane University - Department of Economics ( email )

New Orleans, LA 70118
United States

Marco Serena (Contact Author)

Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros CUNEF ( email )

Calle de Leonardo Prieto Castro, 2
Madrid, 28040
Spain

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