MPI TAX

Why we set up a Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict

Scientific seminar series and conference activities have come to a standstill worldwide, due to the pandemic. A vacuum has been formed and we miss the intellectual exchange of ideas about research. To fill this vacuum and to give all researchers interested in contests and the theory of conflict the opportunity to stay in touch, we need a platform. The Global Seminar can be the appropriate format for this, not only for individual regions but for the whole world. Perhaps other communication formats will develop over time in connection with this platform. But we will start with a series of presentations every two weeks, moving west about eight time zones each week, with the local coordinator inviting, introducing and leading the discussion.

 

Who we are

The Global Seminar is founded and supported by seven people who work at different academic universities around the world:

Subhasish
Chowdhury
Qiang
Fu
Kai A.
Konrad
Dan
Kovenock
Tracy Xiao
Liu
Lionel
Page
Iryna
Topolyan

 

What we do

What unites the members of this group is that they are intrigued by the study of processes in which individuals or groups compete for scarce and valuable resources, making costly efforts themselves and sacrificing them, whether or not they end up winning the resources. Such processes can be found in many and very different areas of life. To name just a few examples: sporting or professional tournaments, prize competitions, election campaigns, military conflicts, court cases or patent races.

 

Register

Sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations about the "Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict" and other related upcoming events as well as information and event invitations of the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.

 

Current Events

Upcoming Events

Date and time
(GMT+1)
Speaker
Presentation title
Host
December 13, 2023 - 16:00 Ella Segev Crowdsourcing Contests: a choice among multiple contests Americas

Past events

12/13/2023 | Crowdsourcing Contests: a choice among multiple contests
Contests & Conflict | 12/13/2023 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Ella Segev

Date & Time: December 13, 2023 - Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (December 14, 2 am)

Ella Segev will present the paper titled "Crowdsourcing Contests: a choice among multiple contests".

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom

(Meeting ID: 945 7563 6701, Passcode: 664926)


Abstract of the Paper:

In a crowdsourcing contest an organizer posts a task (e.g., logo design or code development) on a dedicated platform and offers a prize for the winner (or possibly winners). Solvers then submit solutions to the task and the organizer rewards the solver with the highest quality submission. For the contest organizers, having more contestants is critical to ensuring they receive qualitatively acceptable solutions. Thus, crowdsourcing contest platforms can be characterized as an environment of competition among multiple contests, where every contest organizer competes over the attention of potential solvers. We address the inconsistencies in the extant literature about the behavioral effects on both participation and effort of increasing the prize awarded by contest organizers. We analyze user behavior in a highly controlled experimental setting in which users can participate (by exerting real effort) in multiple online contests that vary only in their prizes. The analysis of the behavior of the participants in our experiments shows that both participation and effort were non-monotonic with the prize, that the low-prize contest was the most effective for the organizers, and that increasing the prize may actually decrease the benefits for organizers. 

Chair: Daniel Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
11/15/2023 | Status-seeking and the importance of status in a rent-seeking society
Contests & Conflict | 11/15/2023 | 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM

Speaker: J. Atsu Amegashie

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (November 16, 12 am), Singapore (November 16, 12 am), Sydney (November 16, 3 am)

J. Atsu Amegashie will present the paper titled "Status-seeking and the importance of status in a rent-seeking society".

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom

(Meeting ID: 660 4272 6006, Passcode: 346165)


Abstract of the Paper:

Human beings care about their relative position in society. We keep up with the Joneses. We are status-seekers. Status-seeking is not necessarily bad. In some cases, status is achieved through hard work and legitimate means. In others, it is through corruption and theft. The premium on social status is much higher in some societies than in others. When the weight on (importance of) status is too high in a society (e.g., a person is accorded respect regardless of the source of his wealth), corruption may be rife in that society. The detrimental effects of such status-seeking can be reinforcing in the sense that the poorer or more unequal is the society, the higher is the return on status and the stronger is the incentive to acquire status through corruption or illegitimate means which, in turn, leads to more social poverty and inequality. 

I consider a model in which status can be achieved either through legitimate/productive accumulation of wealth and/or through theft (rent-seeking). I examine the effect of an increase in the importance of status on rent-seeking and the legitimate accumulation of wealth.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
10/20/2023 | Do groups fight more? Experimental evidence on conflict initiation
Contests & Conflict | 10/20/2023 | 07:00 AM

Date & Time: Los Angeles (October 19, 10 pm), Cincinnati (1 am), Bath (6 am), Munich (7 am), Beijing (1 pm), Singapore (1 pm), Sydney (4 pm)

Changxia Ke will present the paper titled "Do groups fight more? Experimental evidence on conflict initiation" (joint work with Florian Morath and Sophia Seelos).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).


Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
This paper investigates whether distributional conflicts become more likely when groups are involved in the fight. We present results from a laboratory experiment in which two parties can appropriate resources via a contest or, alternatively, take an outside option. Keeping monetary gains expected from fighting constant across all treatments, the experiment compares conflict choices of players in two-against-two, one-against-one, and two-against-one settings. Overall, we find evidence for a higher propensity to opt for conflict when entering the fight in a group than when having to fight as a single player. The effects are strongest in endogenously maintained groups and in the presence of group size advantages (i.e., in two-against-one). The results can be explained by a stronger non-monetary utility from fighting in (endogenous) groups and coincide with a biased perception of the fighting strength in asymmetric conflict.

Chair: Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
09/20/2023 | Support Networks in Contests
Contests & Conflict | 09/20/2023 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Anastasia Antsygina

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (September 21, 1 am)

Anastasia Antsygina will present the paper titled "Support Networks in Contests" (joint work with Mariya Teteryatnikova).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom

(Meeting ID: 670 2007 2636, Passcode: 200511)


Abstract of the Paper:
We study how three heterogenous agents form a support network in the face of bilateral conflict. With a positive probability, each agent engages in a contest game, which we model as an all-pay auction with complete information, against one of his peers. Before the contest, the agents can create a network to support each other. Forming a link is costly but results in direct (effort cost reduction) and indirect (joy of winning) benefits. We show that a pairwise stable network always exists, and complete network is never in this set. The exact number of links being formed depends on the size of indirect benefits. In particular, a network with two links is pairwise stable if and only if indirect benefits are large enough. Finally, a pairwise stable  network is generally inefficient and can display either underinvest or overinvest in the links. 

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
08/16/2023 | Winning ways: How tournament incentives shape risk-taking decisions
Contests & Conflict | 08/16/2023 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Laura Liu

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (August 17, 12 am)

Laura Liu will present the paper titled "Winning Ways: How tournament incentives shape risk-taking decisions" (joint work with Dawei Fang, Changxia Fe, Greg Kubitz, Thomas Noe, and Lionel Page).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
In competitions for rank-based rewards, how does the structure of rewards affect risk-taking? We answer this question both theoretically and experimentally, using a framework where tournament-incentivized agents can make arbitrary, mean-preserving changes in their random performance. We derive the unique equilibrium performance distribution under different contest structures - the value of prizes and contest size specifically. Using an interactive distribution builder, our laboratory experiments confirm our main theoretical predictions: Increasing the real-gain inequality of prizes or adding contestants increases the dispersion of the distribution; convexifying the prize schedule increases both dispersion and skewness, even though the observed dispersion and skewness are generally lower than the predicted values.  

Chair: Lionel Page, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Qiang Fu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
07/12/2023 | Do Failed or Weak States Favor Resident Terrorist Groups’ Survival?
Contests & Conflict | 07/12/2023 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Todd Sandler

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (July 13, 12 am), Singapore (July 13, 12 am), Sydney (July 13, 2 am)

Todd Sandler will present the paper titled "Do Failed or Weak States Favor Resident Terrorist Groups’ Survival?" (joint work with Khusrav Gaibulloev and James A. Piazza).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
Employing two alternative measures of state failure, we investigate how state weakness influences resident terrorist groups’ survival.  Theoretically, state failure favors resident terrorist groups’ survival, while state territorial control fosters resident groups’ termination until some control threshold.  Empirically, we uncover a robust negative relationship between a country’s weakness and its control of terrorism through the lens of the resident terrorist groups’ survival prospects.  The discovered relationship withstands a host of robustness tests – e.g., alternative estimates and samples.  We apply an instrument designed to address endogeneity concerns.  In particular, our novel instrument for failed states consists of the interaction between natural disasters and ethnic fractionalization.  As a state’s percentage of territorial control increases, resident terrorist groups are more prone to ending until some threshold control percent. Our analysis can guide counterterrorism policy by exploiting the nuanced theoretical determinants identified here that foster resident groups’ termination in failing states.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
06/14/2023 | The Optimal Move Order in Two-Player Tullock Contests
Contests & Conflict | 06/14/2023 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Zhewei Wang

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (June 15, 12 am)

Zhewei Wang will present the paper titled "The Optimal Move Order in Two-Player Tullock Contests" (joint work with Lei Gao and Jingfeng Lu).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
This paper studies the optimal design of contestants' move order in a general two-player Tullock contest, allowing for a full range of the contest's accuracy (denoted by r) and players' asymmetry. We first provide a complete equilibrium analysis for sequential-move Tullock contests. We find that an equilibrium is either interior (both players are active) or preemptive (the follower is inactive). In a strong-lead sequential contest, there is a preemptive (resp. interior) equilibrium when the contest is sufficiently accurate (resp. noisy); in a weak-lead sequential contest, there can be a preemptive equilibrium if the players' asymmetry level is low. Using the equilibrium analysis, we investigate an effort maximizing designer's optimal choice among three contest formats: simultaneous, weak-lead, and strong-lead sequential contests. We find that a strong-lead sequential contest is optimal if the contest is sufficiently noisy (including r=1), but it is dominated by at least one other format otherwise. Surprisingly, a weak-lead sequential contest can be optimal if the weak leader chooses to preempt the strong follower in equilibrium. This paper provides a rationale for the diversity of contest designs observed in practice.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
05/17/2023 | Colonel Blotto Games with a Head Start
Contests & Conflict | 05/17/2023 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Christian Ewerhart

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (May 18, 1 am)

Christian Ewerhart will present the paper titled "Colonel Blotto Games with a Head Start" (joint work with Leopold Aspect).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
This paper studies Colonel Blotto games with two battlefields where one player has a head start in the form of additional troops on one of the battlefields. Such games arise naturally in marketing, electoral competition, and military conflict. Sion and Wolfe (1957) have shown that, if the strategy space is continuous, a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium need not exist. Therefore, we consider a finite approximation. Using the iterated elimination of (weakly) dominated strategies, we identify an equilibrium for all parameter constellations and discuss its uniqueness properties. In equilibrium, resource decisions are typically not uniform but tend to concern units that roughly correspond in size to multiples of the head start. Moreover, competition takes the form of a hide-and-seek game, where the favorite tries to outguess the number of units that the underdog commits to the balanced battlefield. Somewhat unexpectedly, equilibrium payoffs of finite approximations of the Sion-Wolfe game accumulate around precisely three values. We also discuss the relation to the model with heterogeneous budgets but no head start.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
04/19/2023 | Fear to Vote: Explosions and Elections in Colombia
Contests & Conflict | 04/19/2023 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Mouno Prem

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (April 20, 1 am)

Mouno Prem will present the paper titled "Fear to Vote: Explosions and Elections in Colombia" (joint work with Juan F. Vargas, Miguel E. Purroy, Felipe Coy, and Sergio Perilla).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here:  

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
Violence in conflict settings is seldom random, making its effects indistinguishable from the intentions of the perpetrator. We leverage on the quasi-randomness of accidental landmine explosions to study how violence shapes electoral outcomes in Colombia. We combine the geo-location of landmine blasts with the coordinates of voting polls in a regression discontinuity design that compares polls close to which a landmine exploded just before the election to those close to which it did just afterward. Blasts within a month from election day depress turnout by 23 percent. In addition, those who do vote penalize the democratic left for the explosions and are more likely to support political parties with ties with illegal paramilitary groups. We provide evidence that the reduction in turnout is driven by fear, and that the post-explosion voting patterns are not driven by changes in composition of voters but rather by changes in voting preferences that are consistent with blaming the democratic left for the actions of illegal left-wing insurgents. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that demining campaigns increase turnout, this partially offsetting the effect of explosions.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
03/22/2023 | Rationally Inattentive Statistical Discrimination: Arrow Meets Phelps
Contests & Conflict | 03/22/2023 | 03:00 PM

Speaker: Anqi Li

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (2 pm), Munich (3 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (March 23, 1 am)

Anqi Li will present the paper titled "Rationally Inattentive Statistical Discrimination: Arrow Meets Phelps" (joint work with Federico Echenique).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here: 

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
When information acquisition is costly but flexible, a principal may rationally acquire information that favors a ``majority'' group over ``minorities'' unless the latter are strictly more productive than the former (the relative size of the groups plays no actual role). Majorities therefore face incentives to invest in being productive to the principal, whereas minorities are discouraged from such investments. The principal, in turn, focuses scarce attentional resources on majorities precisely because they are likely to invest. Our results have welfare and policy implications, as they add to the discussion of affirmative action, as well as the empirical literature on implicit bias and discrimination in performance evaluation.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
02/22/2023 | Diversity and Team Selection
Contests & Conflict | 02/22/2023 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Paan Jindapon

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (February 23, 1 am), Singapore (February 23, 1 am), Sydney (February 23, 4 am)

Paan Jindapon will present the paper titled "Diversity and Team Selection" (joint work with Tigran Melkonyan).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

You can directly access the event here: 

Zoom


Abstract of the Paper:
We analyze a team contest where team managers strategically select compositions of their teams before knowing the type of members that will be more productive in the ensuing competition. The paper fully characterizes the subgame perfect equilibrium of the game and relates the equilibrium behavior to the degree of complementarity between investments of team members and managers' beliefs about the identity of the more productive type. When the degree of complementarity is low, a diverse team provides a ``strategic hedge'' against the possibility of ending up with a team comprised solely of relatively unproductive members. A bias in the managers' beliefs may lead to an equilibrium in which a team member type is left out of the competition. We show that a contest organizer can use type-dependent incentives to counteract such a bias and promote diversity within each team. 

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
01/11/2023 | Party Politics: A Contest Perspective
Contests & Conflict | 01/11/2023 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Marco Sahm

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (January 12, 12 am), Singapore (January 12, 12 am), Sydney (January 12, 3 am)

Marco Sahm will present the paper titled "Party Politics: A Contest Perspective".

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, an online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
Intra-party contests, such as the US primaries, are often used to select a candidate for a subsequent cross-party election. A more accurate selection may improve the quality of the candidate but detract more resources from the subsequent campaign. We model this trade-off as a problem of contest design and show that polarized accuracy levels are optimal: maximum accuracy if the potential candidates are sufficiently heterogeneous, and a highly random selection otherwise. Our results shed light upon the paradox of boundedly democratic party structures.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
12/21/2022 | Market-Bound Research Contests
Contests & Conflict | 12/21/2022 | 03:00 PM

Speaker: Igor Letina

Date & Time: Los Angeles (6 am), Cincinnati (9 am), Bath (2 pm), Munich (3 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (December 22, 1 am)

Igor Letina will present the paper titled "Market-Bound Research Contests".

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, a bi-weekly online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
In many instances the social value of an innovation is much larger than the profits that a firm can obtain by selling the innovation on the market. When this is the case, a research contest can help align incentives and increase welfare. This paper examines the optimal design of research contests when the objective of the principal is discovery and broad adoption of socially valuable innovations. We show that the principal benefits from conditioning the size of the prize on the market performance of the winner. The optimal contest features two quantity cutoffs and two prize levels. The low prize is awarded if the winner sells a quantity greater than the first cutoff while the high prize is awarded if the winner sells a a quantity greater than the second cutoff.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
12/07/2022 | Internal versus external rent-seeking with in-group inequality and public good provision
Contests & Conflict | 12/07/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Indraneel Dasgupta

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (December 8, 1 am), Singapore (December 8, 1 am), Sydney (December 8, 4 am)

Indraneel Dasgupta will present the paper titled "Internal versus external rent-seeking with in-group inequality and public good provision" (joint work with Dripto Bakshi).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, a bi-weekly online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
We examine how inequality in the endowment of secure wealth, mediated through voluntary public good provision, affects rent-seeking within and between groups.  We model a scenario where two communities, each internally differentiated into rich, intermediate and poor segments, contest one another for the division of some rent.  Any rent accruing to a community is distributed internally according to another, simultaneous, contest.  Individuals first decide how much of their endowments to allocate to the two contests.  They subsequently decide how to allocate their remaining wealth and rental income between private consumption and a community-specific public good.  We find that greater endowment inequality among the non-rich, both within and across communities, aggravates inter-group rent-seeking.  Within-group rent-seeking may rise as well.  In contrast, higher such inequality between the rich and others within a community depresses between-group conflict.  Within-group conflict may fall as well.  Better-endowed individuals are more successful in the internal conflict, while better-endowed groups are more successful in the external conflict. 
 

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
11/23/2022 | Interstate Identity Claims under the Territorial Integrity Norm
Contests & Conflict | 11/23/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Sara Mitchell

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (November 24, 1 am), Singapore (November 24, 1 am), Sydney (November 24, 4 am)

Sara Mitchell will present the paper titled "Interstate Identity Claims under the Territorial Integrity Norm" (joint work with Paul R. Hensel, Christopher Macaulay, Andrew P. Owsiak, and Krista E. Wiegand).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, a bi-weekly online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
We argue that states constrained by the territorial integrity norm are less likely to pursue irredentist claims to capture territory containing their ethnic kin, and instead support the group’s efforts to seek independence or better treatment within the state such as protection of language and voting rights. Analyses with the ICOW identify claims dataset from 1946-2018 and four different measures of the strength of the territorial integrity norm at the global, regional, and dyadic levels shows that strengthening territorial integrity norms increase states’ support for their ethnic kin’s demands for independence or improved treatment of the group in domestic politics. However, territorial integrity norms have no effect on whether states pursue irredentist claims to reincorporate ethnic kin into the state. While irredentist claims have become less frequent over time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 illustrates limitations to territorial integrity norms and competition with other norms like self-determination.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
11/09/2022 | Optimal Contests with Incomplete Information and Convex Effort Costs
Contests & Conflict | 11/09/2022 | 03:00 PM

Speaker: Mengxi Zhang

Date & Time: Los Angeles (6 am), Cincinnati (9 am), Bath (2 pm), Munich (3 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (November 10, 1 am)

Mengxi Zhang will present the paper titled "Optimal Contests with Incomplete Information and Convex Effort Costs".

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, a bi-weekly online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
I investigate the design of effort-maximizing mechanisms when agents have both private information and convex effort costs, and the designer has a fixed prize budget. I first demonstrate that it is always optimal for the designer to utilize a contest with as many participants as possible. Further, I identify a necessary and sufficient condition for the winner-takes-all prize structure to be optimal. When this condition fails, the designer may prefer to award multiple prizes of descending sizes. I also provide a characterization of the optimal prize allocation rule for this case. Finally, I illustrate how the optimal prize distribution evolves as the contest size grows.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
10/26/2022 | Investing in Influence: How Minority Interests Can Prevail in a Democracy
Contests & Conflict | 10/26/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Stergios Skaperdas

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (October 27, 12 am), Singapore (October 27, 12 am), Sydney (October 27, 3 am)

Stergios Skaperdas will present the paper titled "Investing in Influence: How Minority Interests Can Prevail in a Democracy" (joint work with Samarth Vaidya).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, a bi-weekly online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
How can the West's economic and political polarization be explained? We argue that persuasive lobbying at various levels of government leads to systematic deviations of policies from those desired by the majority. Implemented policies diverge from the majority position despite centripetal forces that induce interest groups to select positions closer to that majority position. Resources, organization, and cognitive biases can induce one-sided outcomes. When we allow for long-term lobbying infrastructure investments in a simplified tax-and-spend model, the deviations between majority desires and implemented policies are even larger than those in the absence of long-term investments.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
10/12/2022 | All-in fighting
Contests & Conflict | 10/12/2022 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Marco Serena

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (October 13, 2 am)

Marco Serena will present the paper titled "All-in fighting" (joint work with Stefano Barbieri).

Abstract of the Paper:
How does reputation building affect the intensity of repeated conflicts? We propose a model where players, fighting in a sequence of battles, privately know whether they are rational (and choose fighting efforts so as to maximize payoff) or automatons locked into fighting "all-in" in every battle. Rational players may pretend to be automatons and fight all-in in early battles as doing so buys a beneficial "all-in look" that intimidates rivals in future battles. We study such dynamics. In the unique symmetric equilibrium, a rational player has strictly positive payoff only if she monopolizes reputation for fighting all-in. In a reputational oligopoly, a fierce war of attrition to become the reputational monopolist may yield overdissipation. In a reputational monopoly, overdissipation never happens and the monopolist mixes between fighting "mildly" (not all-in) to cash in on her reputation today and fighting all-in to boost her reputation. Applications include turf wars, conflicts, and litigation.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
09/28/2022 | Born to wait? A study of allocation rules in booking systems
Contests & Conflict | 09/28/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Lingbo Huang

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (September 29, 12 am)

Lingbo Huang will present the paper titled "Born to wait? A study of allocation rules in booking systems" (joint work with Tracy Xiao Liu, and Jun Zhang).

This talk is part of the Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict, a bi-weekly online seminar series with researchers from across the world. You can sign up to the Global Network to get information and invitations (including the Zoom Link for each event) about the Global Seminar hereMax-Planck-Institut für Steuerrecht und Öffentliche Finanzen: Global Seminar on Contests & Conflict (mpg.de).

Abstract of the Paper:
When designing allocation rules for scarce goods or services, market designers often face the issue of balancing between efficiency and fairness. Critically, resolving this issue requires quantifying various forms of efficiency losses. We document that a previously understudied source of efficiency loss stemming from queuing can be substantial in many real-world booking systems using first-come-first-served allocation rules. We provide a novel experimental framework that allows us to quantify and compare different sources of efficiency losses across different allocation rules. The theory predicts and lab experiments confirm that the efficiency loss due to opportunity costs of time spent on queuing overwhelms any other efficiency concerns in a booking system based on queuing. However, such loss is almost completely eliminated in a booking system based on lotteries. We also develop and test a novel dual-track system that allows participants to freely choose their preferred allocation rule. We observe a majority prefers the allocation rule based on lotteries over the rule based on queuing.

Chair: Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
09/14/2022 | Why are Mexican politicians being assassinated? The role of oil theft and narcocracy
Contests & Conflict | 09/14/2022 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (September 15, 1 am)

Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero will present the paper titled "Why are Mexican politicians being assassinated? The role of oil theft and narcocracy" (joint work with Nayely Iturbe).

Abstract of the Paper:
Political assassinations are a large and growing problem in Mexico. This paper evaluates the impact of the state’s actions against organised crime on political assassinations and its repercussions for electoral violence targeted towards civilians and voter participation. We combine new and fine-grained data on political assassinations, oil theft, illegal drug cultivation and arrests of drug traffickers during 2000-2021 on a monthly basis at municipality level. During our analysis period, 448 politicians, 154 politicians’ family members, and 20 close collaborators were assassinated in the country. The last two elections of 2018 and 2021 were the most lethal that the country has had in its modern history. We find strong evidence that criminal organisations have committed political assassinations in retribution for state actions. Using panel fixed Poisson model, we show that for every extra square kilometre of illicit drug cultivations being destroyed, the expected number of incumbent mayors being assassinated increases by 4%. However, by far, the highest risk of political assassination is being driven by local state action against oil theft, one of the most profitable sectors for organised crime including drug-traffickers. For instance, for every additional clandestine oil tap (used for oil theft) discovered by the state, the number of expected assassinations of incumbent mayors increases by 22%, and of their collaborators and family being killed by 7%. We find little to no effect in that criminal organisations target voters with electoral violence and no impact on voter participation. Our results suggest that narco-elites use political assassination as a weapon to control who rules in areas dedicated to illicit cultivates and oil theft.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
08/31/2022 | Large Innovation Contests with Cognitively Diverse Teams
Contests & Conflict | 08/31/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Brian Roberson

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (September 1, 12 am)

Brian Roberson will present the paper titled "Large Innovation Contests with Cognitively Diverse Teams" (joint work with Mouli Modak).

Abstract of the Paper:
In this paper we examine a large innovation contest involving teams. Within each team, the team members possess different skills or perspectives (tools) which may be applied to innovation problems. In the contest, prizes are awarded based on the values of the teams' innovations, where the value of an innovation depends on both the tools that a team applies to the innovation problem and the amount of work used to develop the innovation. In this context, we identify sufficient conditions, for team composition and the team innovation production function, under which an increase in team diversity and/or team production efficiency leads to an increase in equilibrium expected performance, for both the individual team and the overall contest.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
08/17/2022 | Creative Contests - Theory and Experiment
Contests & Conflict | 08/17/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Feng Zhu

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (August 18, 12 am)

Feng Zhu will present the paper titled "Creative Contests - Theory and Experiment".

Abstract of the Paper:
In many competitions where creativity and innovation play a large role (e.g., architecture design competitions or research grant competitions), contestants can be uncertain about the organizer’s exact preferences. I develop a model of creative contests in which two firms compete by adjusting their designs when they are uncertain about the contest organizer’s ideal design. My model contrasts with existing contest models, as the latter assume organizer preferences instead to be public knowledge. A model of creative contests that accounts for such uncertainty enables us to study many new questions. In particular, I investigate whether an organizer should disclose her ideal design to contestants and find that disclosure is not always optimal for organizers, because disclosing an ideal design favors one participant over others and thus discourages competition. I also conduct a laboratory experiment to test the model’s empirical relevance when assumptions about rationality and risk-neutrality are not necessarily satisfied and find that the results are generally consistent with theoretical predictions for contestants’ behavior and for whether the organizer benefits from disclosure.

Chair: Qiang Fu and Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
08/03/2022 | Forces of Darkness: The Strategic Dynamics of Territorial Control and Resource Allocation during Civil War
Contests & Conflict | 08/03/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Scott Gates

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (August 4, 12 am), Singapore (August 4, 12 am), Sydney (August 4, 2 am)

Scott Gates will present the paper titled "Forces of Darkness: The Strategic Dynamics of Territorial Control and Resource Allocation during Civil War" (joint work with Siri Aas Rustad, and Christopher Butler).

Abstract of the Paper:
This paper examines resource allocation and the strategic dynamics of intrastate armed conflict. One of the primary findings from Contest Success Function models of armed conflict is the ‘Paradox of Power’ (Hirshleifer, 2001). Essentially, in an asymmetric contest the weaker power will devote disproportionate resources to fighting. Drawing on the contest success function technology, we develop a model of asymmetric conflict. From this model we derive a set of propositions regarding resource allocation on the part of the belligerents. We test our theory and apply our analysis to Islamic State controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. We test our propositions statistically, utilizing satellite data on light emissions and fine-grained conflict event data (using PRIO-GRID). To assess the allocation of resources in a civil war, we employ a quasi-experimental design. Given the non-random nature of ISIS attacks and territorial control, we use Coarsened Exact Matching. This non-parametric data pre-processing method matches PRIO-GRID quarter-cells into two groups, those controlled by Islamic State (the treated group) and those not controlled by ISIS (the experimental control group). Matching allows us to control for the potentially confounding influence of pre-treatment control variables. Fixed effect OLS estimation using the Coarsened Exact Matching data supports our hypotheses. Territories controlled by ISIS emit less light, indicating that resources are being disproportionately distributed to fighting effort rather than for economic productivity. Our analysis provides new insights into the strategic behavior of rebel groups with implications for theory and policy.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury 

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
07/06/2022 | Optimal Contest Design with Tree Architecture
Contests & Conflict | 07/06/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Qian Jiao

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (July 7, 12 am)

Qian Jiao will present the paper titled "Optimal Contest Design with Tree Architecture" (joint work with Zhonghong Kuang, Yiran Liu, and Yang Yu).

Abstract of the Paper:
This paper investigates the optimal (effort-maximizing) design of tree contests. The contest organizer is allowed to design the contest architecture and its associated prize structure. We first propose the pivotal match principle to rationalize the optimality of the winner-take-all prize allocation rule and then fully characterize the optimal contest architecture. We find that when the contest technology is relatively discriminatory, the simultaneous contest is optimal; in addition, when the contest technology is sufficiently noisy, the contest with a balanced binary tree architecture is optimal, in which case each contestant experiences at most one bye. Finally, when the contest technology is moderately noisy, each embedded match should include a prime number of participants, the optimal architecture can be solved by a dynamic programming algorithm. 

Chair: Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
06/22/2022 | On Being Unpredictable and Winning
Contests & Conflict | 06/22/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Carsten K.W. De Dreu

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (June 23, 12 am), Singapore (June 23, 12 am), Sydney (June 23, 2 am)

Carsten K.W. De Dreu will present the paper titled "On Being Unpredictable and Winning" (joint work with Andrea Arciniegas, Jörg Gross, Laura C. Hoenig, Michael Rojek-Giffin, and Daan T. Scheepers).

Abstract of the Paper:
Eruptions of anger and erratic mixing of cooperation and competition can make competitors unpredictable to outside observers and opponents. According to Rational Choice Theory (RCT), being unpredictability can be strategically advantageous. However, core assumptions underlying RCT have been questioned and cognitive science suggests that people have difficulty making themselves truly unpredictable. Here we examine the biobehavioral origins and consequences of unpredictability when aiming to outmaneuver one’s competitor, or to protect against being exploited. Meta-analyzing nine interactive contest experiments (N=650) shows that individuals are unpredictable especially during attack and this increases their probability of winning. In contrast to RCT, however, unpredictability emerges in part because individuals invest out-of-equilibrium, which is irrational from a payoff-maximizing perspective. Follow-up experiments (N=53 dyads) uncover that attacker (but not defender) unpredictability associates with elevated pre-contest testosterone and cardio-vascular stress reactivity. Being unpredictable originates in competitive arousal and increases the likelihood of winning at a cost to both victor and victim. 

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
06/08/2022 | A Network of Thrones: Kinship and Conflict in Europe, 1495-1918
Contests & Conflict | 06/08/2022 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Seth Benzell

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (June 9, 1 am)

Seth Benzell will present the paper titled "A Network of Thrones: Kinship and Conflict in Europe, 1495-1918" (joint work with Kevin Cooke).

Abstract of the Paper:
We construct a database linking European royal kinship networks, monarchies, and wars to study the effect of family ties on conflict. To establish causality, we exploit decreases in connection caused by apolitical deaths of rulers' mutual relatives. These deaths are associated with substantial increases in the frequency and duration of war. We provide evidence that these deaths affect conflict only through changing the kinship network. Over our period of interest, the percentage of European monarchs with kinship ties increased threefold. Together, these findings help explain the well-documented decrease in European war frequency.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
05/25/2022 | Know Thy Enemy: Information Acquisition in Contests
Contests & Conflict | 05/25/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Zhuoqiong (Charlie) Chen

Date & Time: Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (May 26, 12 am)

Zhuoqiong (Charlie) Chen will present the paper titled "Know Thy Enemy: Information Acquisition in Contests".

Abstract of the Paper:
This paper studies the incentives for and the consequences of information acquisition about opponents in contests with independent private values. Two players can spy on each other by privately acquiring a costly, noisy, and private signal about the opponent's value by choosing the signal's accuracy before the contest. Given that they spy on each other, we characterize the unique monotonic equilibrium in the contest whenever it exists. The players may not have the incentives to acquire information when they do not observe each other's accuracies of signals, and always have the incentives when they do observe the accuracies. Acquiring information about opponents may lead to allocative inefficiency but always benefits both players even accounting for its costs.

Chair: Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
05/11/2022 | Parochialism, Social Norms, and Discrimination Against Immigrants
Contests & Conflict | 05/11/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Nicholas Sambanis

Date & Time: Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Beijing (May 12, 12 am), Singapore (May 12, 12 am), Sydney (May 12, 2 am)

Nicholas Sambanis will present work on "Parochialism, Social Norms, and Discrimination Against Immigrants" from the forthcoming book called "Native Bias, Overcoming Discrimination Against Immigrants" (joint work with Donghyun Danny Choi and Mathias Poertner).

Abstract:
In the aftermath of the refugee crisis caused by conflicts in the Middle East and an increase in migration to Europe, European nations have witnessed a surge in hostility toward immigrant minorities. To quell these conflicts, some governments resort to the adoption of coercive assimilation policies aimed at erasing differences between natives and immigrants. Are these policies necessary? Native Bias challenges the premise of such regulations by making the case for a civic integration model, based on shared social ideas defining the concept and practice of citizenship. Drawing from original surveys, survey experiments, and novel field experiments, Donghyun Danny Choi, Mathias Poertner, and Nicholas Sambanis show that although prejudice against immigrants is often driven by differences in ascriptive (ethnic, religious) traits, the suppression of such differences does not constitute the only path to integration. Instead, the authors demonstrate that similarities in ideas and value systems can serve as the foundation for a common identity, based on a shared concept of citizenship, overcoming the perceived social distance between natives and immigrants.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury 

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
04/27/2022 | Pareto Improvements in the Contest for College Admissions
Contests & Conflict | 04/27/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Ron Siegel

Date & Time: Cincinnati (10 am), Los Angeles (7 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Sydney (April 28, 12 am)

Ron Siegel will present the paper titled "Pareto Improvements in the Contest for College Admissions" (joint work with Wojciech Olszewski, Chloe Tergiman, Sergey Lychagin, and Kala Krishna).

Abstract of the Paper:
Many countries base college admissions on a centrally-administered test. There is growing concern about the cost of test-preparation activities students engage in to improve their performance on the test. We investigate how pooling intervals of performance ranking can improve students' welfare in a Pareto sense. Pooling affects the equilibrium allocation of students to colleges, which hurts some students and benefits others, but also affects the costly effort students exert. We characterize the Pareto frontier of Pareto improving policies and identify improvements that are robust to the distribution of college seats. We then calibrate the model using data on Turkish college admissions among science track students and explore Pareto-improving policies of student assignment. Finally, we conduct an experiment based on the calibrated model to test students’ responses to pooling colleges.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
04/13/2022 | Multiple Prizes in Tournaments with Career Concerns
Contests & Conflict | 04/13/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Huseyin Yildirim

Date & Time: Singapore (10 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Sydney (April 14, 12 am)

Huseyin Yildirim will present the paper titled "Multiple Prizes in Tournaments with Career Concerns" (joint work with Alvaro J. Name-Correa).

Abstract of the Paper:
We introduce career concerns into rank-order tournaments and o¤er a novel explanation for the pervasiveness of multiple prizes. We argue that career-concerned individuals, already facing market pressure to perform, will be reluctant to participate in winner-take-all competitions. To entice them and maximize performance, the organizer promises a softer competition through additional prizes. We show that the optimal (minimum) number of prizes is hump-shaped in the population.s talent variance and increasing in publicly disclosed ranks. We also examine entry fees, talent pre-screening, and prize budget as design tools for tournaments, along with prize allocation.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
03/30/2022 | Sexual violence as a weapon of war
Contests & Conflict | 03/30/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Victoire Girard

Date & Time: Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Singapore (March 31, 12 am), Beijing (March 31, 12 am), Sydney (March 31, 3 am)

Victoire Girard will present the paper titled "Sexual violence as a weapon of war" (joint work with Maleke Fourati and Jeremy Laurent-Lucchetti).

Abstract of the Paper:
We show that armed groups perpetrate sexual violence against civilians in response to local economic shocks. We combine new data on resources and sexual violence in a fine-grained panel of cells covering Africa from 1997 to 2018. We find that a one standard deviation increase in the gold price increases sexual violence in mining areas by two-thirds of the sample mean. Importantly, the effect is concentrated around artisanal operations – a labor-intensive resource that is easy to conceal. In contrast, local resources which are capital-intensive, or which production is hard to conceal, have no relationship with sexual violence. Based on a theoretical discussion, we demonstrate how standard rationales of violence as a taxation strategy may explain these findings. We show that we can generalize the analysis to the effect of resources on other forms of non-lethal and lethal violence against civilians. Furthermore, we document that artisanal mining value increases sexual violence mostly in the presence of the armed groups who are the most likely to rely on illegal local taxation, namely, rebel groups. We conclude by discussing how our approach is complementary to the cultural or institutional drivers of sexual violence at the core of the existing literature. Accounting for these drivers, economic shocks remain a powerful predictor of sexual violence.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
03/16/2022 | General Lotto Games with Favoritism: Competitions with Pre-allocations and Asymmetric Effectiveness
Contests & Conflict | 03/16/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Dong Quan Vu

Date & Time: Los Angeles (8 am), Cincinnati (11 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Sydney (March 17, 2 am)

Dong Quan Vu will present the paper titled "General Lotto Games with Favoritism: Competitions with Pre-allocations and Asymmetric Effectiveness" (joint work with Patrick Loiseau).

Abstract of the Paper:
We introduce the General Lotto game with favoritism---an extension of the famous Blotto/Lotto games. In this game, the winner-determination rule is generalized to include pre-allocations and asymmetry of the players' resources effectiveness on each battlefield. Such model captures various application scenarios, e.g., it can be used to model the valency and incumbency bias in electoral competitions. We focus on the Nash equilibrium. First, we consider the closely related model of all-pay auctions with favoritism and completely characterize its equilibrium. Based on this result, we prove the existence and show the construction of a set of optimal univariate distributions, which leads to the construction of an equilibrium of the General Lotto game with favoritism. We extend this result to the Colonel Blotto game with favoritism model and derive an approximate equilibrium. Finally, we propose an algorithm---based on the notion of winding number of parametric curves---to efficiently compute an approximation of the proposed optimal univariate distributions with arbitrarily small error.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
03/02/2022 | When Does Data Sharing Promote Innovation?
Contests & Conflict | 03/02/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Zhi Chen

Date & Time: Singapore (11 pm), Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Sydney (March 3, 2 am)

Zhi Chen will present the paper titled "When Does Data Sharing Promote Innovation?" (joint work with Jussi Keppo).

Abstract of the Paper:
Many innovations today are data-driven, such as self-driving cars. To improve the algorithms of these products, firms make substantial investments in data collection. However, the data is limited for an individual firm, which caps the benefits of the algorithms. Therefore, companies and policymakers ponder whether data collected by individual competing firms should be shared. More specifically, we ask the following three questions. First, when do firms voluntarily share their data? Second, if governments were to regulate data sharing, when would they mandate or prohibit data sharing to promote innovation? Third, when are firms and governments (mis)aligned in their data sharing decisions? Using a game-theoretic model, we identify two key factors that determine the answers to the questions: (i) the degree of complementarity or substitutability among firms' datasets and (ii) the performance uncertainty of the innovation. Overall, our analysis offers guidance to governments on when and how to regulate data sharing. Specifically, governments should mandate (respectively, prohibit) data sharing when firms' datasets are complements (respectively, substitutes) and the performance uncertainty is moderate (respectively, high). Our findings also shed light on several recent developments, such as the new antitrust law proposals by governments to regulate data markets.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
02/16/2022 | The Psychology of Limited Nuclear War: Experimental evidence on public emotions after an escalate to de-escalate strike
Contests & Conflict | 02/16/2022 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Marina Henke

Date & Time: Munich (6 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Bath (5 pm), Singapore (February 17, 1 am), Beijing (February 17, 1 am), Sydney (February 17, 4 am)

Marina Henke will present her paper titled "The Psychology of Limited Nuclear War: Experimental evidence on public emotions after an escalate to de-escalate strike".

Abstract of the Paper:
International security theorists spend much time studying scenarios of plausible nuclear weapons use. Most such scenarios involve the usage of strategic nuclear weapons in a large-scale war. However, already during the Cold War other scenarios were developed that involved a limited nuclear strike. First and foremost a psychological strategy, limited nuclear war plays with the fear of a nuclear Armageddon. In this present moment, many scholars and practitioners suggest that Russia follows such strategy: it might detonate a tactical nuclear weapon over an uninhabited area with the hope of deterring NATO intervention/interference e.g., in the Baltic states or Ukraine. Russia thus speculates that images of a mushroom cloud on TV screens might cause panic and disarray among NATO member state governments stifling a possible NATO response. But is such NATO reaction preordained? How would the publics in NATO member states react to the explosion of a Russian tactical nuclear weapon? This paper addresses this question. By means of a representative survey experiment in Germany and the United States, it demonstrates that an “escalate to de-escalate” strike evokes more anger (than fear) and this emotional response has an independent impact on the policy preferences of the survey participants. These findings have important theoretical and policy implications. 

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

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Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
02/02/2022 | Collective information acquisition
Contests & Conflict | 02/02/2022 | 03:00 PM

Speaker: Kfir Eliaz

Date & Time: Cincinnati (9 am), Los Angeles (6 am), Bath (2 pm), Munich (3 pm), Singapore (10 pm), Beijing (10 pm), Sydney (February 3, 1 am)

Kfir Eliaz will present his paper titled "Collective information acquisition" (joint work with Ran Eilat).

Abstract of the Paper:
We consider the problem faced by a group of players who bargain over what public signal to acquire before deciding on a collective action. The players differ in their privately known state-dependent payoffs from taking the action, and therefore differ also in their willingness to pay for the public signal. We take a mechanism design approach to characterize the efficient frontier of outcomes achievable via bargaining over information. We identify novel distortions in the optimal information structure that arise from the information asymmetry and from the fact that after the signal is realized, the outcome is determined in equilibrium of a subsequent voting game.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
01/19/2022 | The Limits of Meritocracy
Contests & Conflict | 01/19/2022 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Felix Várdy

Date & Time: Cincinnati (10 am), Los Angeles (7 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Sydney (January 20, 2 am)

Felix Várdy will present his paper titled "The Limits of Meritocracy" (joint work with John Morgan, and Justin Tumlinson).

Abstract of the Paper:
We show that meritocracy, in the sense of accuracy of performance ranking, can be too much of a good thing: in contests with sufficiently homogeneous agents, it reduces output and is Pareto inefficient. In contests with sufficiently heterogeneous agents, discouragement and complacency effects further reduce the benefits of meritocracy. Perfect meritocracy may be optimal only for intermediate levels of heterogeneity.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
12/15/2021 | The Election Effect: Democracy in Inter-Group Contests
Contests & Conflict | 12/15/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Stephen Chaudoin

Date & Time: Bath (5 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Munich (6 pm), Singapore (December 16, 1 am), Beijing (December 16, 1 am), Sydney (December 16, 4 am)

Stephen Chaudoin will present his paper titled "The Election Effect: Democracy in Inter-Group Contests" (joint work with Yon Soo Park, and Sarah Hummel).

Abstract of the Paper:
Interactions between countries often depend on choices made by democratically selected leaders.  Using an online laboratory experiment, we show that democratic leader selection increases inefficient effort in inter-group contest games, which share key features with many interstate conflicts.  We attribute a large portion of this increase to an election effect, wherein individuals behave differently after the experience of being elected by members of their group.  Democratic election intensifies group identification and generates an obligation to voters, causing leaders to exert more costly effort in competitive situations.  We use a carefully specified decomposition strategy to distinguish the election effect from better known selection effects, wherein eventual leaders are non-randomly chosen.  From a welfare perspective, our negative finding about inter-group interactions is contrary to the near-universal positive effects of democracy found in intra-group experiments.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
12/01/2021 | The Geography of Resources, Conflict, and Territory in Hominids
Contests & Conflict | 12/01/2021 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Jordan Adamson

Date & Time: Cincinnati (10 am), Los Angeles (7 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Sydney (December 2, 2 am)

Jordan Adamson will present his paper titled "The Geography of Resources, Conflict, and Territory in Hominids" (joint work with Bart J. Wilson).

Abstract of the Paper:
In this paper, we aim to explain how ecological forces affect territorial conflict in humans as a specific instance of hominid behavior. To explain whether we peacefully partition space or fight in either ''scramble'' or ''contest'' competition, we first organize the literature on the territorial conflict in hominids into a general economic model. We isolate how resource skew and variance affect territorial ranges, as well as how they interact with unequal appropriation abilities. We then test the predictions in a controlled laboratory setting. We find more territorial exclusivity and less range overlap than predicted with equal contestants with nonskewed resources, but some tendencies towards monopolization by better appropriators in skewed resource environments. Nonetheless, behavior generally matches the theoretical predictions.  We also probe the effects of red-coloring and treatment-order, finding only that more exclusive ranges arise when equal subjects first interact in nonskewed environments. Overall, we provide a good starting point for a general understanding of territorial conflict in hominids.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
11/17/2021 | Competing for Grades
Contests & Conflict | 11/17/2021 | 04:00 PM

Speaker: Philipp Strack

Date & Time: Singapore (11 pm), Los Angeles (7 am), Cincinnati (10 am), Bath (3 pm), Munich (4 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Sydney (November 18, 2 am)

Philipp Strack will present his paper titled "Competing for Grades" (joint work with Dawei Fang, and Thomas Noe).

Abstract of the Paper:
Many universities and colleges grade on a curve. Grading on a curve creates a contest among students. However, unlike many contests where the value of each prize is explicitly specified, the student contest only specifies the grading curve but not the value of each grade. In this paper, we take the stand that the grade a student receives conveys information related to the student’s post education productivity to the labor market, such as student ability or human capital accumulated during education, which is not directly observable to the labor market. The labor market then “prices” (i.e., sets the wage for) each grade accordingly. Our goal is three-fold: we (i) show how grading curves simultaneously determine post education wages (i.e., grade values) and students’ educational achievements (i.e., efforts made in the contest), (ii) investigate how changes of a grading curve (e.g., grade inflation, grade coarsening, and grade fining) affect wages, and (iii) derive wage-maximizing grading curves.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu and Lionel Page

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
11/03/2021 | On the effectiveness of democratic institutions in preventing ethnic conflict: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment
Contests & Conflict | 11/03/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Hannes Rusch

Date & Time: Munich (6 pm), Los Angeles (10 am), Cincinnati (1 pm), Bath (5 pm), Singapore (November 4, 1 am), Beijing (November 4, 1 am), Sydney (November 4, 4 am)

Hannes Rusch will present his paper titled "On the effectiveness of democratic institutions in preventing ethnic conflict: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment" (joint work with Luke Glowacki and Florian Morath).

Abstract of the paper:
We analyze factors that explain the success of democratic institutions as a means to peacefully solve resource allocation problems. Our preregistered lab-in-the-field experiment investigates the following questions: Can democratic allocation mechanisms effectively resolve distributional conflict in the presence of ethnic hostilities between groups? Does the risk of being exploited by the majority induce the minority to reject democratic allocation institutions and trigger inefficient conflict? Do restrictions of the majority's decision-making power resolve the distributional conflict and increase the success of democratic allocation institutions?
Our design derives from a game theoretic model in which two unequally sized groups can either commit to implementing a given democratic allocation mechanism or trigger conflict prior to observing that mechanism’s outcome. Our treatments address the impact of (a) ethnic hostilities and (b) the decision-making power of the majority on the likelihood of conflict. For (a) we compare majority voting in the presence versus absence of ethnic hostilities. For (b) we compare two more ‘inclusive’ democratic allocation mechanisms: (1) a voting rule strengthening the minority; and (2) the possibility of triggering conflict as an option to exert veto power.
We conducted our experiment in Ethiopia in the fall of 2019, a time of intense ethnic tensions in the country. We recruited a total of 240 participants from two quarreling ethnic groups. Analyzing behavioral outcomes, we find two main effects: (i) being in the minority makes participants significantly more likely to trigger inefficient conflict (ii) unless the minority is given strong veto power. Analyzing participants’ beliefs, we also find that (iii) the absence of ethnic hostility as well as (iv) the voting rule strengthening the minority significantly reduce participants’ beliefs that conflict will be triggered.
Our results experimentally confirm previous theorizing and correlational evidence on the effect of being in the minority on triggering destructive conflict: when minorities anticipate a looming ‘tyranny of the majority’ they may be reluctant to commit to democratization efforts and opt for conflict instead. However, our results also indicate that credible checks to the majority’s power, like veto rights for the minority, can alleviate this problem.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
10/20/2021 | Contests with Network Externalities: Theory & Evidence
Contests & Conflict | 10/20/2021 | 05:00 PM

Speaker: Luke Boosey

Date & Time: Cincinnati (11 am), Los Angeles (8 am), Bath (4 pm), Munich (5 pm), Singapore (11 pm), Beijing (11 pm), Sydney (October 21, 2 am)

Luke Boosey will present his paper titled "Contests with Network Externalities: Theory & Evidence" (joint work with Christopher Brown).

Abstract of the paper:
This paper considers the impact of identity-dependent externalities on competitive behavior in all-pay contests. We introduce a model of network contest games, in which the prize generates externalities for players directly linked to the winner, and establish existence and sufficient conditions for uniqueness of Nash equilibria. Both the structure of the network and nature of the externalities have intuitive consequences for equilibrium investment. In general, positive externalities introduce free-riding incentives, whereas negative externalities intensify competition, especially among highly connected agents. Results from a laboratory experiment provide robust empirical support for the comparative static predictions of the model. Our experimental findings also suggest that observed patterns of mean over-investment relative to point predictions may be driven by both heterogeneous joy of winning and social efficiency concerns that emerge in the presence of IDEs. Altogether, our study provides a novel application for the theory of network games, and new insights regarding behavior in all-pay contests.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
10/06/2021 | Scarcity of Ideas and Optimal Prizes in Innovation Contests
Contests & Conflict | 10/06/2021 | 12:00 PM

Speaker: Jun Xiao

Date & Time: Sydney (9 pm), Los Angeles (3 am), Cincinnati (6 am), Bath (11 am), Munich (12 pm), Singapore (6 pm), Beijing (6 pm)

Jun Xiao will present his paper titled "Scarcity of Ideas and Optimal Prizes in Innovation Contests" (joint work with Nisvan Erkal).

Abstract of the paper:
This paper studies the relationship between optimal prizes and scarcity of ideas in innovation contests. We consider a model where both ideas and effort are integral parts of the innovation process. Contest participants are privately informed about their idea quality. We introduce a new stochastic order to rank scarcity of ideas and study how a contest designer's choice--the profit maximizing prize--should vary with scarcity of ideas. We find that scarcity of ideas results in higher optimal prizes if and only if the benefit from a marginal improvement in the new technology's performance is sufficiently low.

Chair: Lionel Page, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu and Tracy Liu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
09/22/2021 | Peacebuilding and political trust: a survey experiment on political trust in Haiti
Contests & Conflict | 09/22/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Han Dorussen

Date & Time: Bath (5 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Cincinnati (12 pm), Munich (6 pm), Singapore (September 23, 12 am), Beijing (September 23, 12 am), Sydney (September 23, 2 am)

Han Dorussen will present his paper titled "Peacebuilding and political trust: a survey experiment on political trust in Haiti" (joint work with Zorzeta Bakaki).

Abstract of the paper:
Peacebuilding organizations need to generate trust among locals to effectively maintain peace. Haiti has been flooded with foreign intervention following political upheaval in the 1990s and even more so after the devasting earthquake in 2010. The massive external involvement largely by-passed government institutions leading Haiti to be described as a ‘republic of NGOs’. The role of foreigners has become increasingly contested, but little is known about whether Haitians indeed consider all intervention or outsiders similarly. Here, variation in political trust in organizations, such as the UN, INGOs, and local community organizations is examined, reporting on a country-wide survey experiment held in the autumn of 2019. It is shown that identifying the type of organization impacts significantly on people’s expectations and trust. There is no clear evidence that local organizations are trusted more than external organizations, but INGOs are generally seen as more inclusive and least affected by corruption.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
09/08/2021 | How does the network structure affect connection-specific choices? An experiment on the competitive allocation of resources in weighted networks
Contests & Conflict | 09/08/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Sebastián Cortés-Corrales

Date & Time: Cincinnati (12 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Singapore (September 09, 12 am), Beijing (September 09, 12 am) and Sydney (September 09, 2 am)

Sebastián Cortés-Corrales will present his paper titled "How does the network structure affect connection-specific choices? An experiment on the competitive allocation of resources in weighted networks" (joint work with David Rojo Arjona).

Abstract of the paper:
In a wide range of economic, social, and political networks, agents allocate a finite resource (e.g., time) across their differently valued connections with other agents. A growing theoretical literature investigates how these pre-existing weighted networks affect optimal choices. This paper offers, instead, an empirical analysis identifying the effect of elements of the network on actual choices. For that, we design a novel experiment, and analyze the resulting compositional data. Over-allocation to the most valued conflict depends positively (and significantly) on the rival’s degree and, to a larger extent, eigenvector centrality, whereas the effect of the conflict value is limited.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
08/25/2021 | Nonparametric Identification of Bayesian Games (Tullock Contest under Incomplete Information) under Exclusion Restrictions
Contests & Conflict | 08/25/2021 | 01:00 PM

Speaker: Jun Zhang

Date & Time: Los Angeles (4 am), Cincinnati (7 am), Bath (12 pm), Munich (1 pm), Beijing (7 pm), Singapore (7 pm) and Sydney (9 pm)

Jun Zhang will present his paper titled "Nonparametric Identification of Bayesian Games (Tullock Contest under Incomplete Information) under Exclusion Restrictions".

Abstract of the paper:
This paper studies the identification problem for Bayesian games (Tullock Contest under Incomplete Information) within the private type paradigm when researchers cannot perfectly know players' payoff structures. We first show that the benchmark framework is not nonparametrically identified without further restrictions. We then impose the exclusion restriction in the form of an exogenous players' participation, and establish nonparametric point or partial identification results. Specifically, we show that if the distributions of actions intersect with each other when the number of players varies, the model primitives, namely, the private type distribution and the unknown structure, are nonparametrically identified up to a scale. Otherwise, they are partially identified as they can be bounded nonparametrically. Our results can be extended to allow for corner solutions, asymmetric players, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogenous participation.

Chair: Lionel Page, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
08/11/2021 | Threat of sabotage as a driver of collective action
Contests & Conflict | 08/11/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Kris De Jaegher

Date & Time: Munich (6 pm), Bath (5 pm), Cincinnati (12 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Singapore (August 12, 12 am), Beijing (August 12, 12 am), Sydney (August 12, 2 am)

Kris De Jaegher will present his paper titled "Threat of sabotage as a driver of collective action".

Abstract of the paper:
A theoretical model is presented where the welfare of contributors to a public good can increase when they face an adversary who ex post sabotages their efforts. The reason for this result is that it is a best response for the adversary to maximally sabotage the smallest effort, thus increasing a defector’s marginal product of effort. The result applies for a sufficiently large degree of complementarity between the contributors’ efforts, and extends when contributors are heterogeneous. Moreover, for intermediate degrees of complementarity the result also extends when contributors coordinate on the risk-dominant instead of the payoff-dominant equilibrium, when the adversary does not observe individual efforts, and when the adversary is a natural threat that randomly lets individual efforts fail.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
07/28/2021 | Simple Equilibria in General Contests
Contests & Conflict | 07/28/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Oliver Guertler

Date & Time: Cincinnati (12 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Singapore (July 29, 12 am), Beijing (July 29, 12 am) and Sydney (July 29, 2 am)

Oliver Guertler will present his paper titled "Simple Equilibria in General Contests" (joint work with Spencer Bastani and Thomas Giebe).

Abstract of the paper:
We show how symmetric equilibria emerge in general two-player contests in which skill and effort are combined to produce output according to a general production technology and players have skills drawn from different distributions. We also show how contests with heterogeneous production technologies, cost functions and prizes can be analyzed in a surprisingly simple manner using a transformed contest that has a symmetric equilibrium. Our paper provides intuition regarding how the contest components interact to determine the incentive to exert effort, sheds new light on classic comparative statics results, and discusses the implications for the optimal composition of teams.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
07/14/2021 | How do Alliances Grow and Conflict Ensue? An Experiment on Conflict Network Formation
Contests & Conflict | 07/14/2021 | 04:30 PM

Speaker: Jie Zheng

Date & Time: Singapore (10:30 pm), Los Angeles (07:30 am), Cincinnati (10:30 am), Bath (3:30 pm), Munich (4:30 pm), Beijing (10:30 pm), Sydney (July 15, 12:30 am)

Jie Zheng will present his paper titled "How do Alliances Grow and Conflict Ensue? An Experiment on Conflict Network Formation" (joint work with Lu Dong, Lingbo Huang, and Jaimie W. Lien).

Abstract of the paper:

We conduct an experiment on a network formation game in which players can either befriend or attack another player in real time. Each pair of players forms an alliance if both send a friendly link to each other; they become rivals if at least one player attacks by sending a rival link. Using a within-subject design, we vary the cost of attacking and test whether a group reaches either a peaceful outcome in which all members are mutual friends or a bullying outcome in which three members form an alliance and all three attack the fourth member. Consistent with the theory prediction, over 90% groups reached either the peaceful or bullying outcome. Furthermore, there is a threshold level of the cost beyond which groups are significantly more likely to maintain peace instead of ending up in the bullying situation. The continuous time feature of our design provides a rich context to explore the dynamics of alliance formation and conflict. We find that some group-level state variables of the network in the first few seconds strongly predict the final network formation. Among groups that converge to the bullying outcome, forming a three-member alliance tends to precede coordinating on a common rival. Furthermore, a player who receives the first ever attack from any other players is far more likely to be the final common rival than other players, and these players’ efforts to escape from being bullied are mostly futile.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
06/30/2021 | Correlated Play in Group Contests
Contests & Conflict | 06/30/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Iryna Topolyan

Date & Time: Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Cincinnati (12 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Singapore (July 1, 12 am), Beijing (July 1, 12 am), Sydney (July 1, 2 am)

Iryna Topolyan will present her paper titled "Correlated Play in Group Contests" (joint work with Stefano Barbieri).

Abstract of the paper: 
We apply public randomization (Harriset et al., 1995) in group contests settings and introduce group public randomization equilibria (GPRE). We consider group all-pay auctions with various aggregation technologies, including best shot, weakest link, and CES aggregator rules. The well-known multiplicity of equilibria in group contests becomes even more pronounced in weakest link contests with public randomization. However, a refinement of GPRE in the spirit of coalition proofness reduces the gamut of GPRE to a unique strategy profile. Introducing public randomization enables us to analyze group all-pay auctions with a CES aggregator rule, for the first time in the literature. Remarkably, the equilibrium strategy is independent of the elasticity of effort substitution.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

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Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
06/16/2021 | To fight or to give up? Dynamic contests with a deadline
Contests & Conflict | 06/16/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Dmitry Ryvkin

Date & Time: Cincinnati (12 pm), Los Angeles (9 am), Bath (5 pm), Munich (6 pm), Singapore (June 17, 12 am), Beijing (June 17, 12 am) and Sydney (June 17, 2 am)

Dmitry Ryvkin will present his paper titled "To fight or to give up? Dynamic contests with a deadline".

Abstract of the paper:
Abstract: We study dynamic contests between two players whose performance is determined jointly by effort and luck. The players observe each other's positions in real time. There is a fixed deadline, and the player with a higher performance at the deadline wins the contest. We fully characterize the Markov perfect equilibrium for heterogeneous players. Effort is high when the players are tied but collapses quickly when one of them assumes a lead, due to a dynamic momentum effect. Therefore, total expected effort does not necessarily increase in the prize or in the players' abilities. We discuss implications for contest design and propose splitting the contest to cool off competition, and introducing heterogeneous players with optimal head-starts, as possible solutions.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
06/02/2021 | Fighting for Lemons: The Encouragement Effect in Dynamic Competition with Private Information
Contests & Conflict | 06/02/2021 | 04:30 PM

Speaker: Marc Möller

Marc Möller will present his paper titled "Fighting for Lemons: The Encouragement Effect in Dynamic Competition with Private Information" (joint work with Juan Beccuti).

Abstract of the paper:
This paper proposes a tractable model of a dynamic contest where players have private information about the contest's prize. We show that private information helps to encourage players who have fallen behind, leading to an increase in aggregate incentives. We derive the optimal information design for a designer interested in the maximization of aggregate effort. Optimal signals turn out to be private and imperfectly informative.

Chair: Qiang Fu, Co-Chair: Tracy Liu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
05/19/2021 | Simple security games
Contests & Conflict | 05/19/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Marcin Dziubinski

Marcin Dziubinski will present his paper titled "Simple security games".

Abstract of the paper:
We study a class of simple security games, a type of conflict with multiple battlefields and asymmetric players: a defender and an attacker, where the defender always wins a conflict with the attacker. The model allows for heterogeneous values of battlefields, also across the players, and multiple resources of the players. We characterize Nash equilibria and the value of such games in terms of marginal distributions and propose an algorithm for computing small support mixed strategies for given marginals. The characterization allows us to establish a number of interesting qualitative features of equilibria. This is joint work with Jaideep Roy.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
05/05/2021 | Sequential Blotto and Gerrymandering
Contests & Conflict | 05/05/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Mattias Polborn

Mattias Polborn will present his paper titled "Sequential Blotto and Gerrymandering".

Abstract of the paper:
Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy by creating many uncompetitive legislative districts, and generating the very real possibility that a party that wins a clear majority of the popular vote does not win a majority of districts. We present a new approach to the determination of electoral districts, taking a design perspective. Specifically, we develop a redistricting game between two parties who both seek an advantage in upcoming elections, and show that we can achieve two desirable properties: First, the overall election outcome corresponds to the popular vote. Second, most districts are competitive.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
04/21/2021 | Strategic Experimentation and Information Design in Dynamic Contests
Contests & Conflict | 04/21/2021 | 02:00 AM

Speaker: Mohamed Mostagir

Mohamed Mostagir will present his paper titled "Strategic Experimentation and Information Design in Dynamic Contests" (joint work with Yan Chen and Iman Yeckehzaare).

Abstract of the paper:
"Many real-world innovation contests and R&D races have an end goal that might be infeasible. Participants learn about feasibility from their own experimentation and also from observing the progress (or lack thereof) of their competitors. If participants incorrectly learn that the goal is infeasible, they quit the contest and abandon an innovation that could have been achieved. In this paper, we design a novel real-effort experiment to show that a contest designer can avert this undesirable outcome through her choice of information mechanism. By allowing participants to monitor each other's progress, either fully or partially, she significantly increases the chances that the innovation is obtained when it is indeed feasible and when the common prior belief about infeasibility is high. We show that competitor behavior and contest outcomes are sensitive to the timing at which information is released, and we discuss how different information mechanisms affect the designer's payoffs and participants' earnings. Our results provide the first experimental test of the role of information in environments that combine strategic experimentation and dynamic competition, and offer concrete guidelines for how practitioners and applied researchers should select a contest's information mechanism in order to maximize the chances of innovation."

Chair: Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
04/07/2021 | The Impact of Exposure to Political Violence on Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes
Contests & Conflict | 04/07/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Arzu Kibris

Arzu Kibris will present her paper titled "The Impact of Exposure to Political Violence on Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes" (joint work with Neslihan Uler).

Abstract of the paper
We conduct an incentive compatible field experiment with a large representative sample to study how exposure to political violence in a civil conflict context affects risk and ambiguity preferences of individuals. We identify random exposure to violence by relying on a natural experiment in Turkey created by the military institutions and the long running civil conflict in the country. We find that while being exposed to the conflict environment induces individuals to become more risk-seeking, having traumatic direct experiences in that environment creates the opposite effect and renders individuals extremely risk averse. Such individuals also become more averse to ambiguity. Our results indicate that the type and time of exposure should be considered in determining the overall effects.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
03/24/2021 | Moral Transgression: The Impact of Competition
Contests & Conflict | 03/24/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Petra Nieken

Petra Nieken will present her paper titled "Moral Transgression: The Impact of Competition" (joint work with Simon Dato and Eberhard Feess).

Abstract of the paper:
Corporate Scandals such as the ones at Wells Fargo, Sears, or Enron as well as doping scandals in professional sports suggest that highly competitive environments do not only increase effort but also unethical behavior. In line with this, experimental studies find that subjects in the laboratory cheat more in contests compared to non-strategic settings. But can this be attributed to a behavioral effect of competition, often referred to as a "desire to win"? Or is the reason simply that incentives differ since winning in contests yields a discrete jump in the payoff structure? To disentangle these two effects, we compare a contest to a non-strategic setting without competition. Crucially, the expected financial benefits from behaving unethically and the impacts on other participants are exactly the same in both treatments. This allows us to isolate the pure behavioral impact of competition. We find that unethical behavior is more frequent in contests even when all differences except the "desire to win" are eliminated by design.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
03/10/2021 | Optimal Bid Caps in Noisy Contests
Contests & Conflict | 03/10/2021 | 03:00 AM

Speaker: Zenan Wu

Zenan Wu will present his paper titled "Optimal Bid Caps in Noisy Contests" (joint work with Qiang Fu and Yuxuan Zhu).

Abstract of the paper
This paper studies optimal bid caps in a multi-player generalized lottery contest, in which a higher bid improves one's winning odds but does not ensure a win. The bid cap is allowed to be either rigid or flexible. The former imposes outright restrictions on players' bids, while the latter specifies a tax rate for every level of bid and generates tax revenue in equilibrium. A designer commits to the bid cap scheme prior to the competition to maximize a weighted sum between players' aggregate bid and the overall tax revenue she collects through the cap. Our analysis characterizes the properties of the optimum and spells out the conditions for the various optimal bid cap schemes. Our results stand in sharp contrast to studies based on two-player all-pay auctions (e.g., Che and Gale, 1998 and 2006; Kaplan and Wettstein, 2006): We show that with a sufficiently noisy winner-selection mechanism, a rigid bid is always suboptimal regardless of the designer's preference, and no cap is optimal when the designer maximizes only the aggregate bid. Based on our analysis, we develop a rationale that bridges noisy contests and all-pay auctions and sheds light on the nature of bid caps in different contexts.

Chair: Tracy Liu, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
02/24/2021 | An Experiment on the Political Economy of Extreme Intergroup Punishment
Contests & Conflict | 02/24/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Catherine C. Eckel

Catherine C. Eckel will present her paper titled "An experiment on the political economy of extreme intergroup punishment" (joint with Enrique Fatas and Malcolm J. Kass).

Abstract of the paper
We analyze the behavioral determinants of extreme punishment in intergroup conflict. Individuals contribute to team production by a tedious real effort task. Teams compete for a prize in asymmetric tournaments. Asymmetries are implemented as differences in the time available to complete the task, and are generated by nature or by the decisions of one group, arbitrarily chosen. Relative to a symmetric baseline condition in which groups have identical time to complete the task, we study two different types of inequality: economic (one group gets more time than the other, chosen by nature) and political (one group determines how much time the other group is given). We allow for a particular form of intergroup punishment. Individuals in the disadvantaged group may attack and punish all individuals in the other group (thereby reducing their earnings by half) at an extreme price: if they decide to punish the other group, the disadvantaged group member must sacrifice all of their individual earnings. Our results strongly support the link between political asymmetries and extreme intergroup punishment. Relative to a control treatment with no asymmetries, economic inequality has no significant effect on the likelihood of intergroup punishment. However, there is a great deal of punishment in the political inequality treatment, where one group can actively oppress the other. Advantaged groups make very limited use of a conciliatory transfer, only marginally reducing punishment from to disadvantaged groups. Interestingly, we find that skilled individuals are more likely to sacrifice themselves to harm the other group.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
02/10/2021 | Information and Communication Technologies, Protests, and Censorship
Contests & Conflict | 02/10/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Galina Zudenkova

Time: 09.00 am (Los Angeles time), 06.00 pm (Munich/Paris time), 01.00 am 11. February (Beijing time), 04:00 am 11. February (Sydney time)

Galina Zudenkova will present her paper titled "Information and Communication Technologies, Protests, and Censorship" (joint with Maxim Ananyev, Dimitrios Xefteris, and Maria Petrova).

Abstract of the paper
We develop a theory of information flows and political regime change, when citizens use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for both information acquisition and protest coordination. Governments can respond by obfuscation of citizens' signal or by restricting access to ICTs used for coordination. We find that introduction of communication technologies lowers the probability of regime survival, but this effect is weaker in economies that do not use ICTs for production. We also expect less competent governments to use coordination censorship, though this effect is weaker in economies that use ICTs extensively. Some high-frequency empirical evidence is consistent with our predictions.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
01/27/2021 | Optimal prizes in tournaments under nonseparable preferences
Contests & Conflict | 01/27/2021 | 07:00 AM

Speaker: Mikhail Drugov

Mikhail Drugov will present his paper titled "Optimal prizes in tournaments under nonseparable preferences" (joint with Dmitry Ryvkin).

Abstract of the paper:
We study rank-order tournaments with risk-averse agents whose utility over money and effort (or leisure) may be nonseparable. We characterize the optimal prize schedule when the principal allocates a fixed budget and show how it is determined by the interplay between the properties of noise and the utility function. In particular, the distribution of noise alone determines whether the optimal prize schedule has flat regions where some number of prizes are equal, while the total number of positive prizes depends on both the noise distribution and utility function. For unimodal noise distributions, the optimal number of positive prizes is restricted regardless of utility under mild assumptions. Also, while the common wisdom suggests---and it holds in the separable case---that risk aversion pushes optimal prize allocations in the direction of prize sharing, this is no longer true, in general, when the marginal utility of money depends on effort.

Chair: Tracy Xiao Liu
Co-Chair: Qiang Fu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
01/13/2021 | Virtual Teams in a Gig Economy
Contests & Conflict | 01/13/2021 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Yan Chen, Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan

Our study examines the effect of virtual teams on worker productivity and retention on an online platform. Hailed as the future of work, the gig economy provides flexible, low-barrier jobs for millions of workers globally. However, a lack of both organization identity and social bonds contributes to the high attrition rate experienced by gig platforms. To test the impact of virtual teams, we use a large-scale natural field experiment with 27,790 drivers on a global ride-sharing platform to organize drivers into teams that are randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. Treated drivers receive either their team or individual ranking, whereas those in the control condition receive individual performance information without social comparison. We find that treated drivers are significantly more productive than those in the control condition. We further find that drivers in the team leaderboard treatment continue to work longer hours on the platform three months after the end of the experiment. Lastly, we find that those identified as laggards within a virtual team benefit the most from a team contest.

Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury, Co-Chair: Kai A. Konrad

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
12/16/2020 | Competency and Policy in Electoral Contests
Contests & Conflict | 12/16/2020 | 06:00 AM

Speaker: Philipp Denter

Philipp Denter will present his paper titled "Competency and Policy in Electoral Contests".

Abstract of the paper:
I study a model of electoral competition where two parties, that care about both the spoils of office and policy, compete for voters' support by first announcing policy platforms and by then spending costly effort in a campaign contest. Parties are characterized by their exogenous valence/competence and by the policy platforms they adopt. Voters value valence and policy via a CES utility function. I generally characterize the electoral equilibrium. When the costs of campaigning are weakly concave, both parties choose the median voter's ideal policy in the electoral equilibrium, independent of potential valence differences.

When costs are convex, a party with a sufficient valence advantage departs from the electoral center and chooses a more partisan policy platform, while the disadvantaged party remains at the center.

Surprisingly, the advantaged party's equilibrium policy choice, and hence also policy polarization, may be non-monotonic in the size of the valence advantage, if valence and policy are sufficiently complementary.

I further discuss implications of campaign finance reform as well as of politicians' average competence levels in a society for policy choices and polarization.

Chair: Lionel Page, Co-Chair: Qiang Fu and Tracy Liu

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
12/02/2020 | Momentum and Heterogeneity in Contests
Contests & Conflict | 12/02/2020 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Stefano Barbieri, Tulane University

Stefano Barbieri will present his paper (joint work with Marco Serena - Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance) titled "Momentum and Heterogeneity in Contests".

Abstract of the paper:
In sequential contests between ex-ante symmetric players, the outcome of early battles creates an asymmetry in players' incentives to expend resources, which undermines future expenditures. This dynamic force is absent in simultaneous contests, and consequently expenditures in sequential contests are smaller than in simultaneous ones. But if players are not ex-ante symmetric, it is a priori not clear what happens to players' incentives to expend resources in sequential contests. We find that the answer depends on the nature of the heterogeneity. If a player is stronger in every battle, then expenditures in sequential contests are still smaller than in simultaneous ones. However, if players' advantages are allowed to vary and alternate across battles, then a reversal of the result obtains for sufficiently strong asymmetry, and expenditures in sequential contests are greater than in simultaneous ones.

Chair: Dan Kovenock, Co-Chair: Iryna Topolyan

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
11/18/2020 | Ethnic Conflicts and the Informational Dividend of Democracy
Contests & Conflict | 11/18/2020 | 06:00 PM

Speaker: Dominic Rohner, University of Lausanne and CEPR

Dominic Rohner will present his paper (joint work with Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti and Mathias Thoenig) titled "Ethnic Conflicts and the Informational Dividend of Democracy".

Abstract of the paper:
Prevailing theories of democracy focus on class conflict. In contrast, we study democratic transition when ethnic tensions are more salient than the poor/rich divide, building a model where (i) ethnic groups negotiate about allocating the economic surplus and (ii) military and political mobilizations rest on unobserved ethnic identity. Free and fair elections elicit information and restore inter-ethnic bargaining efficiency. Autocrats can rationally choose democratic transition, even if they risk losing power, as elections reduce the opposition’s informational rent. The predictions of our framework are consistent with novel country-level and ethnic group-level panel correlational evidence on democratization in the post-decolonization period.

Chair: Kai A. Konrad, Co-Chair: Subhasish Chowdhury

Contact Person

Event Team

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Marstallplatz 1
80539 Munich

Phone: +49-89-24246-5255
Fax: +49-89-24246-5299

Mail: contests@tax.mpg.de
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