Overbidding and overspreading in rent-seeking experiments: Cost structure and prize allocation rules

Subhasish Chowdhury, Roman Sheremeta and Theodore Turocy

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent-seeking contests. Most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost, and find both overbidding relative to the Nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation of efforts, which we term ‘overspreading.’ We investigate the effects of allocating the prize by a lottery versus sharing it proportionally, and of convex versus linear costs of effort, while holding fixed the Nash equilibrium prediction for effort. We find the share rule results in average effort closer to the Nash prediction, and lower variation of effort. Combining the share rule with a convex cost function further enhances these results. We can explain a significant amount of non-equilibrium behavior by features of the experimental design. These results contribute towards design guidelines for contests based on behavioral principles that take into account implementation features of a contest.

Keywords: rent-seeking; contest; contest design; experiments; quantal response; overbidding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (106)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Overbidding and overspreading in rent-seeking experiments: Cost structure and prize allocation rules (2014)
Working Paper: Overbidding and overspreading in rent-seeking experiments: Cost structure and prize allocation rules (2014)
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