Large contests without single crossing

Wojciech Olszewski; Ron Siegel

doi:10.1007/s00199-019-01244-1

Large contests without single crossing

Wojciech Olszewski, Ron Siegel^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

We show that the equilibria of contests with many players and prizes are approximated by certain single-agent mechanisms. This complements the work of Olszewski and Siegel (Econometrica 84:835–854, 2016), who considered a more restricted environment in which players’ utility function satisfies a strict single crossing condition. Relaxing strict single crossing enlarges the set of approximating mechanisms and weakens the notion of approximation, but implications regarding equilibrium behavior in large contests can nevertheless often be derived. When the approximating mechanism is unique, a stronger notion of approximation obtains.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1043-1055
Number of pages	13
Journal	Economic Theory
Volume	74
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-019-01244-1
State	Published - Nov 2022

Funding

We thank three referees for extremely helpful comments and suggestions that improved the paper substantially, and Ivan Canay, Joel Horowitz, and participants in the Current Frontiers in the Theory of Contests conference for very helpful suggestions. Financial support from the NSF (Grant SES-1325968) is gratefully acknowledged.

Keywords

All-pay auctions
Asymmetric contests
Large games
Mechanism design

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

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10.1007/s00199-019-01244-1

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AB - We show that the equilibria of contests with many players and prizes are approximated by certain single-agent mechanisms. This complements the work of Olszewski and Siegel (Econometrica 84:835–854, 2016), who considered a more restricted environment in which players’ utility function satisfies a strict single crossing condition. Relaxing strict single crossing enlarges the set of approximating mechanisms and weakens the notion of approximation, but implications regarding equilibrium behavior in large contests can nevertheless often be derived. When the approximating mechanism is unique, a stronger notion of approximation obtains.

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Large contests without single crossing

Abstract

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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