Incentives in Contests

Abstract: This dissertation investigates players' incentives in contests, settings where players expend resources or effort to win a given prize. It consists of three standalone papers (Chapter 2-4), preceded by introductory remarks (Chapter 1).Accuracy in contests: Players' perspective. An interest-based theory is proposed for the slow adoption of technology in sports and other contests. Interpreting accuracy as the extent to which winning depends on effort rather than exogenous uncertainties such as luck, preferences for new technology that improves contest accuracy is investigated from the perspective of players as well as that of the designer. Conflict of interests between players and a designer is emphasized.Pre-contest communication incentives. Quite often, players engage in precontest communication activities by publicly stating their strong desire to win an upcoming contest. Despite being widely-recognized as a crucial part of players' competitive strategies, research on the subject is mostly restricted to incomplete information settings in which communication ha a signaling role. This paper offers a complementary explanation by showing that pre-contest communication incentives may still be present in complete information settings where communication has no signaling role.Home versus away team advantage in two-legged competitions. In team sports such as soccer, elimination contests between to teams often arise in the form of two-legged tie games, with each team as the home team in one leg. It has been argued that teams having the second leg at home have an advantage over their rivals. Utilizing a two-stage tournament model, it has been shown that, contrary to popular belief, the outcome is neutral regarding the order of the hosting of games.